Apple of My Eye
by Light My Crazy Diamond
Summary: Bloodshed, gore, death - such grim consequences are happily absent in the Smash universe. But when the walls of the Smash Mansion become increasingly tainted with the fresh blood of fallen Smashers, it's up to Yoshi and Lucario to bring an end to the unleashed horror of an insidious demon. Chapter 21: A friendship shatters.
1. Fooling the Devil

**Part I**

* * *

"It's _cold!_ " Yoshi bawled as he struggled through the snow. It was five feet deep, and every step Yoshi took resulted in the snow swallowing him all the way up to his leg. Lucario, being Lucario, was able to nimbly walk on the snow without sinking and had already put quite a distance between himself and Yoshi.

'Silence, you silly dinosaur.' Lucario's telepathic voice chided Yoshi in the confines of his skull. 'Today it is our shift to procure the necessary supplies for the wellbeing of the Smash Mansion, and it would be much more bearable if you could shut up for just five minutes.'

"Easy for you to say! _You're_ not the one with snow in his boots!" Yoshi shivered as a draft of cold pierced his hide. "And you have fur! All I have are scales – _and_ I'm cold-blooded!"

'Do not blame it on me then! Blame it on your ancestors! Why weren't they clever enough to evolve fur or the ability to control body heat? Sheer stupidity, as demonstrated by your immaturity and predilections for whining!'

"My ancestors were _not_ stupid," Yoshi said, affronted, "and neither am I." There was a short pause. "What does 'predilections' mean?"

Lucario ignored him, instead choosing to avoid a particularly deep patch of snow that he could sense with his Aura. For a while there was silence, except for the sifting of snow and Yoshi's annoyed grunts. Then the silhouette of the TnT Mall materialized through the thin mist cast by the weather, and Lucario felt his paws touching the jagged asphalt of the snow-cleared roads that led up to the entrance. Finally… At least Yoshi would be less likely to complain now.

Yoshi had seen it too. With a big whoop, he bounded forward, driven by the sight, however indistinct, of his destination. "Hallelujah!" he cried, as he jumped six feet into the air. "Finally, I can – Oop!"

Lucario turned. Yoshi, that idiot, had jumped right into the deep patch of snow that Lucario had so carefully avoided, and now only the great green sphere of his nose was visible as it shook violently and desperately.

Lucario sighed as he made his way over. Today, he decided, was going to be a long day.

* * *

"FOOD!"

The shoppers turned as the green dinosaur further announced his presence with a visual cue of an impressive jump onto the green Welcome mat. Behind him walked in a blue bipedal canine with the look of an embarrassment similar to that of one delivered by the hands of an overbearing child.

'Quiet, you fool! You are a _Smasher_! Maintain some dignity!'

"Right… _Dignity_." Yoshi rubbed the back of his head. What was dignity again…? Ah, who cared? If it can't be eaten, it wasn't important. The warm, delicious air of the mall was beginning to cure the numbness of his cold, and in turn the sharp pains of his stomach ripped at him as it growled for food, food, food. Not dignity. Unless, of course, it could be eaten. Can it be eaten?

"Can it be eaten?" Yoshi asked.

' _What_?'

"Okay, listen," Yoshi said as Lucario grabbed a cart. "I'm really, really, hungry, and I can't do anything on an empty stomach. So… How about _you_ go get everything we need, and I join you when I'm all full and ready?"

' _What_?'

"Okie dokie, see you later!" And before the Pokémon could grab him, he was off, swiftly making his way through the crowd of shoppers that engulfed him before Lucario could so much as lift a hair.

'Yoshi!' Lucario bellowed, attempting to direct his telepathy at the dinosaur's mind. 'Yoshi! Get back here this instant!'

There was no reply. Frustrated, Lucario threw a furious glance at the wave of shoppers. No… It wasn't worth it. Teeth clenched, Lucario wheeled his cart to the grocery section as an annoyed, elderly Koopa with a green shell clicked her tongue in impatience for Lucario to move away from the carts.

'That dinosaur is _dead_ when I get a hold of him!'

* * *

"Sorry!" Yoshi cried as he crashed into a small Villager, who shrieked as she fell to the ground. Yoshi helped her to her feet before running off again. "Didn't mean to!" he said back as a final form of apology, as the Villager, disgruntled, began smoothing her green-pink dress.

Restaurants, restaurants, restaurants everywhere! Which to choose…? Earthbounded Steakhouse, The Iced Eggplant, Mamamia Mushrooms... Yoshi checked his belly for money (the way he did it was to sift around the contents of his secondary stomach, which was the organ responsible for storing ingested things, as opposed to the primary stomach, which digested whatever came its way. By constricting the highly sensitive muscles of his secondary stomach, Yoshi could identify whatever he had stored inside him). Five bucks. Not enough for the big stuff. "Fast food it is, then!" Yoshi said cheerfully as he turned to LittleMacDonalds. "Luckily, I'm not picky, or else – whoa!"

Yoshi slipped. The floor, as it turned out, was slippery from the catastrophic mixture of spilled Chu Jelly, pulped Maxim Tomatoes, and Liquefied Plasma. Yoshi skidded, arms flailing for balance, and slid all the way to the descending steps of a stairway. For one glorious second Yoshi stopped, one leg high in the air while the other balanced precariously on the very edge of the step. A false sense of inertia gushed momentary relief into Yoshi –

–And then he was tumbling straight down, arms and legs flying, shocked that gravity had betrayed him. He hurtled downwards, a green blur of a wheel, before smashing nosefirst onto the thick, unforgiving surface of some solid hurt, and his stomach crashed hard on the cold tiled floor.

There was the shock of pain, and then there was the body-ripping agony of it.

"Fucking _hell_ , Sakurai," Yoshi mumbled. "I thought you said you would remove tripping from Smash Bros."

For quite a while Yoshi lied in a fetal position on the ground, wallowing in a mixture of self-pity and hatred at the world. As the pain dissipated – pain was, after all, nothing new in the world of Nintendo – Yoshi grew aware of his surroundings. Or rather, he grew aware of the lack of it. He looked up and around himself. Where…? The ominous thing was that there was only darkness all around him. Yoshi turned around and saw a small rectangle of light. The shoppers were bustling around as if nothing had happened. Nobody looked into to see where the clumsy dinosaur had fallen into. For all that appeared, there hadn't even been a clumsy dinosaur at all. Yoshi frowned as he got up to his feet. Where…? Nowhere, that was where. It seemed as if he had fallen into some obscure… _Hiding place_ was what came into Yoshi's mind, but was that really an appropriate term for something in a mall?

Yoshi was making his way to the small rectangle of light when it suddenly occurred to him that he hadn't checked what he had crashed into. His left foot was on the first step when he hesitated. Something told him it was a bad idea. Something told him to walk up and never look back. But insatiable curiosity always wins, and Yoshi turned around slowly.

It was a shop. Yoshi could see the nose imprint he had made on the display glass, which displayed nothing at all, nothing but impenetrable darkness. Yoshi walked forward and looked in. He could make out nothing. He turned to his right, and saw the metal eye of a doorknob staring back at him. Yoshi seized it and turned. He was half-hoping that it wouldn't budge. He was hoping that the shop would be locked from his intrusive presence. It wasn't. There was a click, then a groan as the door yawned open. The shop was open, and Yoshi was its first customer of the day.

Where…? Yoshi turned around again. The small rectangle of light was slightly to the right of his vision now. All it would take would be a small step backward, a slight turn of the body, and a run up the stairs to rejoin comfort and presence. But at the same time, all it would take would be a small step forward, a slight push of the body, and a few careful steps into the maws of darkness for an offensively boring day to be turned into the next best adventure since _Yoshi's Island_.

It was decided then. Yoshi took a tentative step into the shop and felt the walls next to the doorway for some kind of switch. There wasn't one. Frowning, Yoshi took one more step, extending his arm out further, and in doing so he was now completely in the shop. With sudden force the door slammed behind Yoshi. The small shriek and the jump of shock were greeted by a sudden lighting of candles that balanced on dishes jutting from the walls. The eerie welcome of light, however, was lost on Yoshi, who immediately wrapped both hands around the doorknob and wrenched with his entire body.

"Open, open, open, open, _open_!" Yoshi screamed as he pulled at the door with all his might. The door remained stubbornly shut. Yoshi was as it for quite a while, attempting to win a battle he knew he would lose. Eventually, panic, recognizing the gravity of the situation, made partial way for rationality, and Yoshi jumped from the door. Keys… A key, that's what he needed. Yeah, this was nothing new. A locked door could always be opened by a key… Yoshi whipped around and looked around. Columns of shelves greeted him, well-constructed planks of wood that held dust-shrouded crystal balls, jeweled figurines that had lost their sheens, fragile-looking vases with faded symbols, titleless spines of forgotten books…

"But no key!" Yoshi cried desperately as he scanned the shelves. He ran past a wall of dolls that had scar-like seams etched across their faces and limbs, wore ragged and soiled clothes, and stared at him from behind glassed glossy eyes. Yoshi searched desperately as he walked along the third of fourth aisle. Pale pearls and sinister silvers, and a cup that was bleeding a thick, brown liquid. Rational panic was losing its control over Yoshi's sanity as flecks of fear oozed into his brain. His eyes were screaming for keys, keys, any key. Yoshi reached the end of the third aisle, and a sense of infinite helplessness seized him. Yoshi closed his eyes and mustered the last of his hopes. 'It's here,' he thought, as he took a deep breath of stale air and decaying dust. 'It has to be.' He opened his eyes, and began walking the last aisle.

There were menacing tools of iron, steel, and murder, and there were forks and knives of gleaming sharpness, and then –

Yoshi stopped. A sphere of red light – jarring in the parchment glow of the candles – mesmerized his eyes. It glowed softly and humbly, a soothing source of almost friendly light. Yoshi approached, and saw that it wasn't just a sphere. It was an apple, the kind with a slightly bumped bottom so that it was able to balance on its own. It continued to shimmer comfortingly, and a shroud of calmness suddenly engulfed every facet of his emotions, so that all fear was stifled, all panic extinguished. His stomach growled, softly at first, then growing louder and louder as it realized its call for hunger was no longer to be drowned out.

The apple… He wanted – no, he _needed_ to eat it.

Slowly, gently, Yoshi wrapped his hand around the apple and brought it to his mouth. It was cold, ice-cold, and the tiniest of shivers ran down his spine as he caressed its waxy smooth body. But what did it matter? It could be as cold as where the Ice Climbers came from, for all Yoshi cared. He wanted to eat it. To eat it was right, to eat it was good. To eat it was right to eat it was good. To eatit was right toeatit wasgood eatrightit good eatrighteatgoodeateatgoodeateateateateateateateateateateateateaeateateateateatmeeatmeeatmeatmeeatmeatmeeatmeeatme eat me.

Eat me.

Eat me.

Eat me.

It was in a split second of sudden recall and release from controlled thinking that Yoshi was able to emerge the victor. The pernicious spirit was careless, too confident for its own good. It released its hold the moment it felt its shell slide down the constricted muscles of an esophagus. It thought it had won, it thought it was finally over, it thought it was finally beginning. It thought it had found a host, at last, after an infinite amount of years sealed in the body of a fruit. It thought it was victorious.

It was wrong.

Yoshi had two advantages. One, he was quick-witted, and a single second of relinquished control was just enough to turn the battle in his favor. Two, he had the benefit of being a Yoshi, and that was where Lucario was wrong: His ancestors were _not_ stupid. They were clever, they were practical, and above all, they had evolved to survive extraordinary situations involving a devil hell-bent on taking over their bodies.

Thousands of nerves fired signals, causing the muscles of his esophagus to widen just a little bit. The path to his primary stomach closed, and a flap leading to his secondary stomach opened. The apple tumbled into the latter, the organ responsible for storing ingested things, as opposed to digesting whatever came its way.

Yoshi gasped. He teetered backwards, slamming his back and his head against the wall of the room. At the exact same instant every single light was extinguished as a sharp _click!_ of an unlocked mechanism shot through the silence of the room. Yoshi got up immediately. There was a time for rest, a time for recovering his bearings, but there was also a time for, simply put, getting the fuck out of there, and Yoshi was not so far gone to not know where his priorities lied.

He ran, ran like hell, stirring behind him clouds of dust. He ran through the darkness, navigating his way not by sight, but by fear and instinct. His hand found the doorknob, and twisted it violently. The door burst open and Yoshi, like a bird liberated from its cage, flew out back into the world of light, leaving the eclipsed room of sinister horror in the darkness of its own existence.


	2. This Ain't Arkham

It took Yoshi exactly twenty-two seconds to fly up the stairs of limbo and burst out into the rectangle of light. He was blinded by the incandescence of it, and the sheer turbulence of his emotions isolated him from the existence of being, so that no amount of external stimuli could wake him from his state of raw emotions and energy. The mental burden of the trauma, and the sudden release of it as his entire body became inundated with an overwhelming surge of relief, forced Yoshi to plop down onto the ground as he shuddered and wheezed and panted greatly with his tongue lolling out.

Now was the time for rest, now was the time for recovering his bearings. He closed his eyes and inhaled, exhaled, inhaled, exhaled, filling his lungs with the glorious oxygen of air untainted by age and dust. His heart beat madly in a state of heightened panic, and the _bu-dum_ , _bu-dum_ , _bu-dum_ of it reverberated in the confines of his skull, so that it was all he heard, as if he had locked himself inside one of the chambers of his own heart.

Slowly, gradually, the heave of his chest grew smaller and smaller, the gasps of his breaths became lighter and lighter. Dimly he grew aware of some gentle force pressing repeatedly against a part of his body. Garbled noise of the outside world began to drown the beatings of his decelerating heart. With great effort Yoshi's eyes fluttered open. He saw a blur of a face, a mesh of yellow and brown overtones that tried to form itself into a distinct shape. He closed his eyes again, shook his head. The panic and the relief and the shock of it all were slowly dissipating now, freeing their stifling control over his brain. The floodgates were opening, and his thoughts, memories, and senses were returning in dangerous overdrive.

"Little Yoshi, shall I call your mommy?"

Yoshi's eyes flew open. It was a Rito, and her cartoonishly huge eyes, the slight droop of the crevice of her beak, showed nothing but concern as she lightly tapped his shoulder. Yoshi looked down at tanned skin of her arm, a brilliant contrast to the snowy feathers of her wing that curved out from the purple sleeves of her robe.

She was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

The room, the apple – the sudden loss of control over his own body. Yoshi's eyes widened, and with a flash he grabbed the Rito's arm like a vice. She let out a small shriek as he looked at her dead in the eyes. He attempted to speak, but his tongue flopped like a useless fish in his mouth, and it took a series of incomprehensible moans before he could find his words.

"Call –" he wheezed, and cleared his throat. He was aware, suddenly, how every single shopper had stopped in his or her tracks to stare at him. Why at him, though? Did they not see the gaping hole of the descent to hell behind him? He shook his head again, and spoke, louder this time. "Call security. Call the police. Call the manager – call whoever's in charge of this damn place!" With a shuddering arm he pushed himself back up to his feet, letting go of the Rito, who immediately proceeded to take a few steps back.

"There's a fucking madhouse down there," Yoshi nearly shouted, his voice a schizophrenic vehicle of sound that varied largely in noise and stability with every word it communicated. He pointed behind him, refusing, even now, to cast his eyes into the portal to the supernatural world of horrors. "Whoever built that in here is a fucking madman. I was locked in there – apple forced me to almost eat him – call –"

Yoshi stopped as he realized that the Rito was backing away even further now. The concern in her eyes was all but gone, replaced instead by fear – fear of _him_. He looked around. The same expression was reflected on everyone else's face, the same fear communicated in their eyes. For the first time in what seemed like a long time, an emotion akin to anger welled up inside of Yoshi, and he felt himself ripping open his vocal cords as he yelled, "Don't believe me? Look behind me! Go into it yourself! Go on – look –"

Yoshi turned around, and felt himself being immediately silenced. There was nothing there, nothing but the cheerful yellow spread of a blank wall.

"I – but –" Yoshi sputtered.

"Little Yoshi," the Rito said, and this time her voice shook almost as much as Yoshi's, "shall I call the asylum?"

"This ain't Arkham," Yoshi muttered as he walked forward and placed his hands against the wall. Solid force pushed back, and all of a sudden Yoshi's head began to spin. The very thread of logic and sanity threatened to unravel, and all of a sudden down was up, up was down, nothing existed, everything was cardboard, everything was plastic – _the apple_!

He constricted the muscles of his secondary stomach, sifting aside the mess of the contents, until he felt it – round and smooth, ice to the raw muscles of his organ. Yoshi shuddered. Here then, was proof, concrete evidence, that all that had transpired was not an illusion of insanity. The apple was a physical manifestation of conflict and contradiction. It had been pure evil, and yet here it was gushing comfort and guidance into him through the fact of its own existence. He turned around, confident now that he had won. What had once drained him of his own free will was now supplying him with strength and conviction. "I can prove it," he announced. "Here, take a look!"

Yoshi had thrust his hand in front of his mouth and was just about to spit the apple out when something flashed in his mind. It was the torturous memory of feeling his right of choice, his own independent thinking, _himself_ becoming siphoned away from existence as the evil forces of the apple asserted dominance over the shell of his body. It had happened when he had first cast his eyes upon its deceivingly soothing light, the red glow that promised comfort and security. What then, would happen if he spat out the apple for all to see, for all to fall under its dark magic – including himself? An irrepressible shudder shook his entire body, and Yoshi lowered his hand. No, no – the apple must remain out of sight. For the second time that day, a narrow disaster had just barely been avoided, and the sudden turn of events, the sudden understanding of the weight of certain decision, strangely instilled an odd calm into him. "Right then," he muttered. "Well – I guess that's that. Carry on, folks. Nothing more to see –"

'YOSHI!'

The dinosaur jumped what must have been ten feet into the air as Lucario's voice boomed inside his skull. All the shoppers turned to the source of the telepathy. Lucario, obviously, had not taken pains to keep his voice private.

"Lu – Lucario!" Yoshi stammered weakly as he look in horror at the seething Pokémon advancing towards him. "I – I was just looking for you! How you been, 'mon?"

Lucario stopped barely an inch from Yoshi. The dinosaur could feel the warm breath of rage wash over his nose, and for a delirious second he found himself wishing that he could go back to being locked inside the room.

'So,' Lucario's voice oozed of silky venom that drenched terror into Yoshi's brain. 'Had a good _meal_?'

"Yeah, yeah! It was – it was fantastic! It was great!" Yoshi gulped, and eyed the bags of grocery and assorted merchandise hanging from Lucario's balled paws. "Did you – err – have a good shopping trip?"

The bags dropped to the floor as Yoshi felt his entire body being swooped into the air by his neck. The shoppers issued a collective gasp of surprise as Lucario began to Force Palm Yoshi multiple times across his face.

'Yoshi' – SMACK – 'you' – BWAP – 'immature' – DOOSH – 'irresponsible' – SMASH – 'fucking' – KA-POW – ' _Girafarighole_ –'

With each strike Yoshi let out a choked whimper of pain. A Goron and a Pokémon trainer bounded forward and pulled Lucario away, causing the dinosaur, moaning and groaning, to drop to the ground with a pathetic flop.

"Calm down, brother!" the Goron rumbled in his deep voice.

"Don't make a scene here, Lucario, or I'm forcing you into my Master Ball," the trainer threatened half-jokingly as he slapped Lucario in his back.

"Yeah, Lucario," Yoshi wheezed from the floor. "Where's your dignity?"

Lucario buried his eyes in his paw, taking deep, deep, breaths. He wrestled free from the grip of the Goron and the trainer, and walked forward to Yoshi, who was writhing in pain on the ground. 'Get up,' he ordered coldly. Yoshi complied almost immediately, getting to his feet even as his entire body shook violently. Lucario thrust the bags into his arms. 'You're carrying these, and a peep out of you and I swear I'm going to make sure Kirby cooks us dinosaur meat for dinner tonight,' Lucario warned. Yoshi gulped and could only nod.

Turning around, Lucario exchanged brief glances of thanks to the intercepting duo, before addressing the crowd with his telepathy: 'I seek your apology for the commotion we have created. It was not our intention to create such a scene of mindless and irrational violence. Please forgive us, and do not let this isolated incident mar the otherwise good name of Smashers.' With that, Lucario gave a bow, and raised a paw to smack Yoshi's head down.

"Oof!" Yoshi cried.

"Hold on," a voice quipped up from the crowd. "You two are _Smashers_?"

'Indeed we are,' Lucario said, and his chest inflated briefly with pride. 'I'm the one and only Lucario, and this idiot here is the one and only Yoshi.'

There was an outburst of mumbling, a mixture of astonishment, wonder, and – hold on a minute. Lucario frowned. Was that a mild trace of suppressed outrage he was detecting? That was new. Immediately he put two and two together and glared at Yoshi. 'What did you do _this_ time?' Yoshi could only shrug.

Lucario's question, however, was answered quickly enough. "I'd watch that Yoshi if I were you, young 'mon!" an elderly Goomba wheezed as he stared at the direction of Yoshi. "Of all the Yoshis I've met in my life – a very odd selection to be a Smasher, and a disgrace to the good name of Yoshis upheld by others of his brethren!"

'Oh? And what did he do _this_ time, may I ask?' Lucario asked, barely keeping his tone from being sardonic.

There was an outburst of noise as several angry voices suddenly began to rise.

"Tortured that Rito, the poor thing! She was only trying to help!"

"Going on and on about some room behind him –"

"Ridiculous thing about an evil apple –"

The crescendo of jabber and gossip grew louder and louder. Lucario impaled Yoshi with a look of pure steel. 'So, care to explain what this is about?'

For a split second Yoshi wanted to cry, to bawl his eyes out, to break down and splurge everything that happened, no matter how insane it sounded. He wanted to spit out the apple, despite the knowledge of its power, despite the fact that it would be exactly what it wanted, so that there was at least an ounce of truth to the empty words he had spoken. Everything, everyone, had been so antagonistic to him – Lucario, the shoppers, the cruel twist of fate that ordered the disappearance of the mysterious room so that he was nothing but a lying delinquent in the eyes of the world. He wanted, even if it was for a single instant, to elicit a potion of sympathy, to attract a morsel of empathy, to relieve a fraction of the huge weight of unnecessary guilt that he was saddling. Simply put, he wanted to cry.

But no. He was not one to let the tides of sadness mar the character he had built for himself: Cool, fun-loving, happy-go-lucky, cute, innocent, always smiling. And so, instead of crying, he laughed.

"Yoshiyoshiyoshiyoshiyoshi!" Guffaws, giggles, great gasps of laughter. Even Lucario was shocked as Yoshi doubled up, bending forward and holding his stomach in exaggerated fashion. He felt the coldness of the apple dig into the walls of his stomach… But no, ignore it, push it aside. Out of sight, out of mind. That's it… Out of sight, out of mind.

"You should have seen them, Lucario! I had them good! They were all convinced that I was some escapee of a mental hospital before you came and ruined it all!" Yoshi stood back up, wiping tears of laughter from his eyes. "They were gonna call Batman on my tail, I swear! They thought I should be locked up in Arkham or something!"

The silence returned, even heavier than before. Everyone, including Lucario, was struggling with the audacity of Yoshi's words as they sank into the minds of the shoppers, who, until now, were certain they had been witnesses to the actions of a mentally deranged dinosaur.

"So it was all a trick?" a confused girl from the _Mother_ universe asked.

"A prank," Yoshi said gleefully.

Once again the noise level was rising as thoughts and opinions were exchanged. Some were shaking their heads, not in disbelief, but in steadily rising realization of the truth of his words. Yoshi was, after all, always a big joker, wasn't he? That's what he and Ness and Toon Link and a couple of the other young ones were known for… Boy, he sure did have them, alright. That Yoshi, he was one hell of an actor. Could he have been a graduate of the Yoshi Theater Company? Even the Rito was laughing it off now, telling everyone how convincing he had been. What a good-natured girl. Ah, but why did he do it? Why pretend to be crazy, when there were so many other lighter, more innocent pranks that were more fitting of him?

"I'm ambitious, what can I say?" Yoshi shook his head. "Gets a bit boring to always just drop eggs on people's head, you know? But man, this is probably gonna be the last time I ever do something as grand as this. The reaction was _not_ what I was looking for!"

He gave a short little bow, and, arms laden with items from Lucario's shopping, turned to general direction of the exit. "Come on, Lucy!" he called out to the Pokémon, who stood still amidst the haze of his own confusion. "We're already running late! Gotta get these things to the people who ordered them, before _they_ start complaining how much of a slacker you are!"

'Err… Right…' Following Yoshi's suit, Lucario gave another awkward bow to the crowd, which was already beginning to dissipate on account of Yoshi's departure. As Lucario walked past them, he heard some even express their respect and pride for Yoshi – " _That's_ the green dinosaur we all know and love." "Had me completely ruined for a moment there! I thought our Nintendo universe was beginning to break down or something!" "Charmander charmander char!"

Secretly, Lucario was glad. Running away, neglecting his shopping duties, prioritizing food over duty – that was something completely expected of Yoshi, even if it drove Lucario up the wall way more than that one time an orgy of Zubats had Confuse Rayed him to near-faint. The moment of lunacy that Yoshi had apparently displayed was something completely out of character, and for a while there Lucario had felt a little fazed by this disequilibria in Yoshi's actions. It was therefore a tremendous relief to learn that it all had been another one of Yoshi's prank, even if the nature of the prank itself encompassed a slightly sinister nature – since when did Yoshi ever pretend to be out of his mind? But whatever. He had explained it himself: He had wanted to try out something new, had expressed his regret over the fact that he did not get the reaction he was hoping for.

For the slightest second, as Lucario hurried to catch up with Yoshi, he couldn't help but feel a slight tinge of grudging respect for the dino. But then he caught sight of the shopping items that were resting on Yoshi's back, items he was forced to buy on his own, and the superficial anger that results from even the smallest injustice returned in full force as the two Smashers exited the warmth of the mall to once again combat the harsh winter cold.


	3. A Hole Lotta Love

Just over an hour after entering the TnT mall and already Yoshi and Lucario were beginning their tortuous trek through the deep snow again.

'You are so going to die when we get back to the mansion,' Lucario fumed. 'Neglecting your shopping duties, running around like a fool, and pretending to be insane? Oh, you just wait till I get my claws on you… And when Mario hears about this…'

"Mario's a friend," Yoshi reminded as he freed his leg from the snow with a grunt. "Doesn't matter if he's one of the big heads of the Smash Mansion. I always get away with things in the end."

It was annoying because it was true.

'By the end of this day you'll be so black and blue you're going to wish you never hatched from that vile egg of yours,' Lucario spat.

"You're not a high tier anymore, Lucy," Yoshi said, trying to damper the smirk threatening its way into his voice as he hid his smile under the pretext of bending down and dusting snow off his boots. He couldn't see it, but he knew that Lucario was blushing so furiously that an oval of red was etching itself on the blue fur of each cheek.

'Neither are you, you incompetent reptile.'

"I resent that! I'm miles better than I was in Melee and Brawl, anyway."

'Yeah? Where are the tournament results to prove it, then?'

"I'm starting to get a decent amount of Top 8 positions in some of the huge tourneys! Plus, none of the pros are playing me! It's all because I'm a unique character archetype no one bothers learning, that's why!"

'Oh, shut up. I'm sick of your whining already.'

The journey back to the Smash Mansion continued in silence. Yoshi was having a particularly troublesome time – burdened under the weight of the spoils from the shopping trip, feet still sinking through the wet, freezing snow – but he barely registered any discomfort as he rolled the apple around in his stomach. It was like constantly licking a lip ulcer that was barely a source of pain but continued to be a bother through its very existence anyway. Yoshi rolled, rolled, rolled the apple around, feeling its chill and smoothness, still remembering its capacity for frightening control. Strangely enough, he no longer felt any agonizing mental pressure from the events that had transpired. The trauma was over, and though the mysterious phenomena of sudden existence and inexistence remained unexplained, Yoshi found comfort in the knowledge that the fact of the matter was that _it had happened_. That knowledge was all it took for him to undergo a catharsis of calm and realization. It mattered not that no one believed him, as long as he himself knew the actual truth of it all. Besides, finding yourself trapped in an auto-locking room, feeling the reign over yourself being wrenched away by a wretched apple, and turning around to see that the room had become nothing but a figment of your own memory – all were just three of the many strange things that happened regularly in the world of Nintendo. It was best not to question these things.

His only concern now was disposing of the apple. He couldn't do it here – not with Lucario around. He would have to wait until he returned to the privacy of the Smash Mansion before getting the putrid fruit out of his system. No matter what, he couldn't look at it. He was sure that, like last time, he would be instantly overcome by the intense desires to devour it the moment he laid his eyes on it, and this time, he had a feeling that the apple would make sure it was properly swallowed and digested. Such a task might have been a challenge for most residents of the Nintendo universe, but Yoshi once again had a benefit of being a… A Yoshi. Whatever passed through his stomach, primary or secondary, would come out encased in an egg – a perfect shell of protection that would shield his gaze from the glow of the possessive apple. From there it would only be an Egg Throw away before he would finally be able to be free himself from the damn thing.

Yoshi was so confident about his plan that he instantly felt a surge of happiness shooting through his entire body again. Everything was going to be OK, everything was going to be alright. Watching Lucario's back, he couldn't quite help but drop the bags of merchandise to the ground and coil up his body with playful energy, motivated by an impulsive desire to tackle the Pokémon and have some fun wrestling and rolling around in the snow.

At that precise instant, Lucario's eyes widened as he detected, barely two yards ahead of him, a horrifyingly deep trench on the path they were taking, a volume of empty space with prodigious diameter and monolithic depth. It was a monster of an abyss, hidden underneath the blanket of snow, threatening to consume all who walked directly into its mouth and send them falling into the deepest pits of nowhere. What a hole, with a bottom that could potentially reach the core of the earth, was doing in the middle of a road that was the basic infrastructure for the very structure of this city was beyond Lucario. But this was just one of the many strange things that happened regularly in the world of Nintendo. It was best not to question these things.

He raised up an arm and said, 'Yoshi, stop! For some reason there's a huge hole right – OOF!'

Too late. Yoshi jumped forward, tail wagging happily as he rammed into Lucario with all his weight and might. Lucario squealed like a Bidoof being checked for prostate cancer as both he and Yoshi tumbled forward into the snow, which, instead of cushioning their fall, immediately succumbed under their weight and sank through to reveal a gaping blackhole of a bottomless pit.

'YOSHI YOU SON OF A FEMALE ARCANINE IN HEAT!' Lucario screamed as he and Yoshi fell, fell, fell, fell, fell. A roar of wind buffeted their free-falling bodies as darkness and sheer cold quickly enveloped them. Through his Aura Lucario detected Yoshi rolling turbulently downwards, letting out a stream of terrified screams as he did so. Cursing repeatedly, Lucario straightened his body into a streamlined position and shot down in an almost graceful arc to Yoshi's tumbling body.

'You idiot! Why did you push us down this hole?!'

"I didn't know it was there!" Yoshi cried. "Why the hell would there be a hole this deep in the middle of a fucking road?! Shit, the day just gets weirder and weirder and – AWAWAWAWA!"

For they had finally crashed into the bottom, after nearly a full minute of falling. Both Smashers crash-landed into a pool of pale balls that was collectively soft enough to break their fall. Lucario bounced into the air from the impact alone, arms and legs flailing uselessly for some form of support, before he fell back down, head first, so that his head became buried in the thick sea of balls.

Yoshi was a bit more graceful. He bounced up, like Lucario did, but on the second landing he landed on his side, so that he rolled down the hill of balls until he was on actual ground – that is to say, the hard rocks of the mantle of the Earth.

"Ugh…" Yoshi got up, disorientated from the shock of the fall, and immediately fell back down on his rear. The light from way up above was filtering through the darkness, and Yoshi could see the exact identity of the balls as he picked up the one nearest to his left foot.

He let out a burst of laughter.

"Hey! Hey! Lucy! Check this out!" Getting up successfully this time, he saw Lucario, half-buried in the mountain of balls, buttocks wiggling frantically as he attempted to free himself. Chortling, Yoshi flutter-jumped over to Lucario's position and pulled him free. Lucario's face made Yoshi double up in harder laughter – the Pokémon had a ball stuck into each socket of his eyes, and his snout was stretched into a smile because they had found their way into his mouth, too.

"Come on, spit it out!" Yoshi said cheerfully as he thumped Lucario on the back. Lucario hacked and coughed as the balls flew out of the orifices of his face, wheezing and gasping from the near-suffocation. "Look," Yoshi said as he brought a ball up to Lucario's eyes. "They're Pitfalls!"

Pitfalls indeed, and lots of them. The duo had fallen into a trench of what must have been thousands of Pitfalls, their exclamation marks all faded a dull red from their usage. The mountains of Pitfalls they were standing on visually reflected the sheer depth of the pit.

'Which _monster_ would bury such a huge number of Pitfalls into one hole?' Lucario cried. 'The legal limit is _one_!'

"Whoever did this is a _genius_ ," Yoshi said in awe as he looked around at the scenery around him.

'This is not funny, Yoshi! This is – this is – this is animal cruelty!'

"Well, technically, you're a Pokémon, so you're not really protected by the same animal rights –"

'Shut up! This is all _your_ fault!' Lucario bellowed as he turned to face Yoshi with the purest look of rage spewing like magma from his eyes. 'Why in the name of Red's wrinkled Pokéballs did you push us down this hole?! Do you have any idea how much trouble we're in now?! We're never going to make it back to the Smash Mansion at this rate! You better have a solution to this, or Arceus help me, I will fucking _murder_ you!'

"Hey, hey, Lucy! Relax!" Yoshi held up both hands as he grinned. "Look, look, I swear I got this. Hang on, let me just dig it out…"

With utmost concentration Yoshi began to sift through the contents of his secondary stomach again as Lucario glared on. A Shyguy's mask, a baseball, a single Bell coin he had managed to swipe from Villager earlier today, Link's Gale Boomerang (which the Hylian was still turning the entire Smash Mansion upside down looking for), a pair of Wii Fit Trainer's shorts, a rolled-up newspaper, a plastic peach Yoshi had thought was real, one of R.O.B.'s gyros, the apple…

Yoshi shuddered as he felt the last item on the list. At the same time he found what he was searching for. "Found it!" he announced happily and, with great care and precision, he forced the item up his esophagus. He spat it out into his hand and presented it to Lucario. "Ta-da!"

Lucario only continued to glare. 'And explain to me how exactly a Koopa shell is going to help us out of this hellhole you got us into?'

"It's not just any old Koopa shell! It's a blue one, and you know what that does!" Yoshi hugged what was once the biological backbone of a living, breathing creature furiously to his chest. "I knew there would be a day when not fully digesting little Gregory would come in handy!"

Lucario's anger turned to confusion as he failed to locate the reason for Yoshi's happiness. 'I don't get it.' Then, as his bemused tone turned into a snarl, he projected, 'If this is another one of your tricks –!'

Yoshi stopped hugging the shell and looked back at Lucario. "You really don't know?"

'No! How the hell am I supposed to know? I come from Pokémon, not whatever freakish universe you crawled out from!'

Yoshi stared back at Lucario with a crestfallen look. "You're telling me you never played my debut game? _Super Mario World_?"

'I – No, I don't have time for playing games! Silly, childish ones at that.'

"I saw you playing _Kirby and the Amazing Mirror_ with Kirby the other day," Yoshi began to pout. "You were gushing over how much _fun_ you were having… Praising Kirby for being in _such_ a good game… How delightfully _innocent_ it was…"

'I – I –' Now Lucario was starting to feel a little uncomfortable. 'Oh come on, Yoshi, be reasonable. No one ever plays the debut games of any character.'

"I played yours," mumbled Yoshi. He looked down, refusing to look at Lucario now. " _Pokémon Pearl_. I still remember… When I first got you. You were just a little egg from Riley then…"

Lucario was starting to feel from bad to worse. 'Ah, Yoshi, I'm – I'm touched and all, but –'

To Lucario's horror, tears were beginning to fall from Yoshi's downcast face, plinking softly on the Pitfalls.

"I still remember, when you hatched." Yoshi's voice was watery and quivery now. "It – it was the happiest day of my life." More tears. "You – you were just the _happiest_ Riolu ever, so full of energy and innocence. Like you wanted to take over the world." Yoshi sniffed and rubbed an arm over his nostrils. "I – I fed you your favorite Poffins and sang you your favorite songs and kept you in my only Luxury Ball. When you evolved, I… I couldn't believe how fast you were growing…"

'Yoshi, I… I don't know what to say…'

"I named you _Sparky_!" Yoshi was wailing now, hands over his eyes as the tears flowed non-stop.

'Ah, Yoshi!' Lucario approached and awkwardly wrapped an arm around the crying dinosaur's neck. 'I'm terribly sorry, alright? Listen – listen! When we get back, I swear the first thing I'll do is to play _Super Mario World_ , alright? It's a promise! I never even knew – hey!'

For Yoshi had thrown off Lucario's arm and was bending over in the greatest bouts of laughter yet.

"I'm just kidding! I nicknamed you _Fartbrains_!"

' _What_?'

"And you were never a main member of my party! Replace Infernape, for you? As if! I only kept you around as a HM Slave for Strength, Rock Smash, and Rock Climb!"

' _What_?'

"Yeah, you were pretty useless," Yoshi said with brutal honesty. "Actually, wait, come to think of it, there was a time when you proved to be a valuable member of my team in battle."

'Oh?' Lucario felt his rising anger from the sudden betrayal dissipating somewhat.

"Yeah. In a gym battle with Byron. My Floatzel fainted, but I really needed her back to win against his Steelix, so I just sent you out and let you die from a hit while I used a Max Revive on Floatzy." Yoshi grinned. "You should have seen the look on your face when Steelix Dragon Breathed you to oblivion. You were so pathetic, I almost felt bad for you!"

'Yoshi you fucking asshole! I'll turn you into Fox's Arwing fuel!' Lucario charged forward and was just about to smash his feet into Yoshi's gigantic nose when the dinosaur swerved out of the way and raised up the Koopa shell in taunting cruelty. "Nuh-uh. You want out of this hole, you're gonna have to learn to curb that Pokébattling instinct of yours."

Lucario thought he heard an explosion deep in the recesses of his sanity.

'How, exactly,' Lucario seethed, paws balled and fangs bared, 'do you intend to get us out of the mess _you_ got us into?'

"It's simple. Watch and learn." With that Yoshi threw the Koopa shell into the air, and, ever the showman, performed an impressive twirl with his entire body as he shot out his tongue, making it seem as if he was ejecting an elegant, vertically twirling ribbon from his mouth as his tongue grabbed the shell in mid-air and forced it down into Yoshi's primary stomach.

The effect was immediate. With a dazzling shine wings emerged from Yoshi's back, soft and delicate, white like the purest snow. The sudden beauty of the transition caused Lucario to take a step back as he stared, in a stupefied trance, at the fluttering wings that spilled gracefully from the sides of Yoshi's back and bestowed upon him an almost angel-like appearance.

'You can do that without a Smash Ball?' Lucario asked at the wondrous sight.

"Yeah! My Final Smash is actually basically what happens when you combine the effects of me eating all the different shells!" Yoshi grinned as he floated over to Lucario. "I used to have to keep them in my mouth while I was flying, which made me look totally ugly and uncute… But I've since learned to harness its power after digesting it." Again Yoshi gave a flashy twirl, rising slightly above Lucario as he did so. "It doesn't last a long while, though, so quickly, grab on so that we can haul our asses out of here!"

'You're too high up! I can't get on your back!'

"I'm not letting you on my back! That's reserved for Mario! You're hanging onto my legs!"

'Don't be ridiculous! Do you want me to make this your burial ground?! Get back down here, before I –'

With a sudden thrust Yoshi boosted upwards, causing Lucario to cry out:

'Alright, alright, I'll hold onto your smelly feet! Let's just get out of here before it's too late!'

" _That's_ my Fartbrains," Yoshi grinned as he lowered himself just enough for Lucario to grab onto his shins. "Are we all comfortable down there?"

'You call this comfortable?' Lucario screamed as he gagged at the stench emanating from Yoshi's boots. 'Just stop stalling and get going already! You said this thing has a timer to it, right?'

"Yeah, but…" Yoshi paused, suddenly, and, much to Lucario's frustration, made no effort at all to fly.

'What the hell are you waiting for now?!'

"It's just that… This scene of us… Flying out of a deep dump, where balls and balls of fading existence rot to be forgotten…" Yoshi was choking up again, and this time he looked down at Lucario with utmost sincerity and concern twinkling through the tears in his eyes. "Lucario… You're not going to jump off mid-way through our flight up, are you?"

'Are you out of your mind? Why on Sinnoh would I ever do that?!'

"Just in case only one of us can make it," Yoshi sniffed.

'Yoshi –!' Lucario began to warn.

"You're gonna fucking kill me? Yeah, yeah, I know already." Immediately the sadness disappeared as Yoshi stretched a smile again. "So are we ready to fly? On the count of three… Two… One!"

Yoshi rocketed upwards, beating his wings furiously and vigorously as he dragged Lucario up with him, who dug his nails into Yoshi's boots for dearest life. The wind flapped the tissues of Lucario's muzzle and eyelids as Yoshi continued to scream upwards, letting out barbaric yells of "Yooooshi!" as he did. Slowly the light was growing clearer and clearer, but Lucario did not notice as tears flew out from his overly-exposed eyes. He was finding it increasingly hard to breathe as the pressure on his chest grew stronger and stronger –

WOOSH! With a sudden explosion of light the two Smashers were back out into the open world of the above. Yoshi whooped in delight while Lucario merely closed his eyes in relief. They had escaped, they had made it. Now he could finally feel the joy of being back on solid ground, to know that his feet would not rest on the rounded surfaces of hoarded Pitballs or dangle precariously over thin air as Yoshi dragged him upward.

Lucario jumped off, landing on the edge of the abyss where the shopping bags were. Yoshi landed right next to him, his wings flickering at an increasingly rapid pace until they all but disappeared from existence.

"I'd say that was a fantastic adventure!" Yoshi said gleefully. "I feel like pushing you back in there again, just so – OOP!"

Lucario slammed his palm into Yoshi's stomach, forcing the dinosaur to fly a great distance away before landing on his back.

'Never.' Lucario took a step. 'Do.' Another step. 'That.' He threw one of the bags down onto Yoshi's nose. 'Ever.' The other bag crushed Yoshi's stomach, where the area of impact had been seconds ago. 'Again.' A kick to Yoshi's side.

"Yeah, you're very welcome for saving you," Yoshi groaned as he cradled his stomach.

'If you didn't push us down there none of this would have ever happened,' Lucario snarled as he turned around. 'The only reason you're not dead on the ground right now is because you somehow managed to rectify your mistake and get us out of there. But I swear – interrupt our journey back home any more times and I swear to Arceus, I'm pulling that tongue out of your mouth. I'll chase you to the ends of the Distortion World if I have to.' Lucario began walking, not even turning once to check on Yoshi as the dinosaur, with a heave of a great sigh, followed slowly, feet sinking into snow and back arching from the weight of the shopping bags.

As it turned out, Lucario had nothing to worry about. The journey back to the Smash Mansion went uninterrupted for the rest of its entirety.


	4. Fruit Salad, Yummy Yummy

'Here at last,' Lucario muttered as he pressed his paw against one of the brick pier of flanking the sides of the gate. It was a classic wrought gate in terms of structure, but its size was anything but. It would take twenty Lucarios stacked up on each other's shoulder to just barely reach the pointed tip of the gate. Its very appearance oozed of decadence and class, what with its gold-plated iron looped and bent into intricate circles and swirls. At the very center, split in half by the vertical slit where the two gates joined and separated, was the Smash logo, formed from the curved bars of the gate as it shone a glimmering gold in the afternoon sun.

On the right brick pier was a square scanning device shaped like a R.O.B. head, and upon looking at it, Lucario smacked his forehead with an open palm.

'Yoshi! Yoshi!' Lucario turned around, only to see that the dinosaur was a considerable distance behind, still wrestling with the snow. With a great sigh Lucario bounded forward and helped to take one of the bags off of his back. 'I hope you brought your Smash ID card, because I forgot to bring mine.'

"I-I-I d-d-didn't," Yoshi shivered as he hugged his chest tightly.

'What! Don't you keep it around in that stomach of yours?'

Yoshi shook his head as he sniffed loudly. "L-l-lost it."

'Lost it?!'

Yoshi nodded, and a drip of mucus emerged from his left nostril. "G-g-getting n-new one this w-w-YOSHOO!"

A projectile of turquoise dinosaur snot and phlegm came flying out of Yoshi's nose and mouth and, with a sickening "Poooick!", splattered itself over Lucario's chest. The Pokémon yelped in disgust and dropped down to the snow, scraping his soiled fur against the ground, while Yoshi had the foresight to leap ahead and put himself a safe distance from the Pokémon.

When Lucario's chest was clean enough, he turned around and walked back to the gates of the Smash Mansion, where Yoshi was waiting for him, still hugging his chest fiercely, still clattering his teeth.

"S-s-sorry."

'It was an accident,' Lucario muttered, fighting to keep his boiling anger in check. He looked at the scanning R.O.B. again and let out a sigh. 'I don't suppose you have any grand idea to get into the Smash Mansion now, do you?'

"S-s-security question."

'What?'

"Security q-question! I-if you forget to b-b-bring your card y-you just have to s-s-scan your hand and a-answer a s-s-security question!"

'I didn't know that.'

"Y-you never f-f-forgot your c-card before, have you?"

'Don't think I have, no.'

"Yeah, well, it's t-there. They asked y-you the first time y-you c-c-came, remember? Anyway." Yoshi brushed past Lucario and placed his palm on the R.O.B.'s glowing yellow eyes, wrapping his finger around the sides of the scanner. There was the noise of some whirring internal contraption, and then a mechanical voice stated, "Identity confirmed. Name: Yoshi. Universe: Yoshi. Species: Yoshi. What can I do for you, Yoshi of the Yoshis from Yoshi?"

"F-forgot ID card."

"Now randomly choosing one of ten security questions," the R.O.B. head informed. More whirring noise. "Question selected. What do elder Yoshis do that annoy you?"

"Talkin' about my g-g-g-generation," Yoshi stuttered.

'Talkin' about my generation!' Lucario suddenly cried, without rhyme or reason.

"Correct," the R.O.B. replied. "Yoshi of the Yoshis from Yoshi granted admittance into the Smash Mansion." There was a slight pause, and the R.O.B. head spoke up again. "Judging by your awful stuttering, things they do look awful c-c-cold."

"You got that right," Yoshi muttered as, with a great groan of reluctance, the gates slowly began to open. Yoshi and Lucario slipped through the widening gap. With a slight shudder, the gate halted to a stop, and immediately began to close behind them. With each holding a bag, the two Smashers walked side by side up the stone pavements that led to the sprawling facades of the magnificent Smash Mansion.

Imagine that you have just completed Luigi's Mansion and have achieved the A Rank, prompting the game to reward you with a picture of the best possible mansion Luigi can now call his home – abundant in size and stature, pristine in the quality of its architecture and design. Now triple the height of this mansion and double its length and segment the new mansion into three wings and you'll get a final product that is similar enough to the Smash Mansion. Its gargantuan properties were mighty and imposing, and yet nothing less could be expected from the residence that housed the most highly-esteemed characters of the Nintendo universe.

The mansion was a jewel of dark red and black, the standard colors associated with the franchise. A duo of pyramids functioned as the mansion's roofs for its West and East Wings, while the Central Wing was topped with a large and flat surface for special events that might prove fitting on the very top of the Smash Mansion. Engraved in large words directly underneath the roofs, stretching across the width of the three wings of the mansion were the words 'Super Smash Bros'. Surrounding the Smasher's residence was a circular perimeter of sprawling courtyards and gardens, green and bursting with a wealth of fauna in the times of spring and summer but currently desolate with the freezing chill and howls of winter. Enclosing the Mansion in a circular cage of security were brick walls as high as the entrance gate, the sight of which was blocked from the Smashers by trees strategically planted along the inner circumference of the entire area.

Welcome, in other words, to the Smash Mansion.

* * *

'First thing I'm going to do is to take nice warm bath,' Lucario muttered as canine and dinosaur approached the large doors of the building.

"M-m-me too," Yoshi shivered, his pace quickening as the looming front of the building drew ever nearer.

'No! _You_ are going to distribute what we bought to the Smashers that have ordered them!' Lucario snarled, thrusting into Yoshi's face a list of the items they had been tasked with buying and the respective Smashers they now belonged to.

"What?! N-no way! I'm the one who d-d-dragged all this stuff here!"

'And I'm the one who spent a full hour buying all of them! You better get those things delivered nice and proper, Yoshi, or else – OW!'

"Direct hit!" came a shout of glee from behind them. The back of Lucario's head was now splattered with snow as both he and Yoshi turned around. They saw Lucas standing with an expression of purest fear on his face, and Ness, who was running away with baseball bat in hand.

"It w-wasn't me, Lucario!" Lucas stammered as he inched away backwards. Yoshi noticed, wistfully, that both he and Ness were bundled up in healthy bundles of thick clothing.

"Lucas," Ness roared from behind, "just shut up and run!" Yoshi shot the psychic prankster a thumbs-up, to which Ness responded with a wink. Lucas took heed of his fellow _Mother_ hero's words and ran from Lucario as if he was a spurting volcano of fireballs – which, honestly, wasn't too far off from the truth.

'This is why I refused to let my old trainer put me in the day care with that promiscuous Lopunny back in the days,' Lucario spat as he rammed the door open. 'I fucking hate kids.'

"Ah, come on, Lucy, they're not that bad," Yoshi smirked as he breathed a sigh of heavy contentment upon entering the warmth of the Smash Mansion.

'That includes you, you childish ingrate! Now I'm warning you – you better have all those items delivered to everyone who's asked for them, or else!' And with that final warning Lucario stomped off to the hallway that led to the Residence Building, where each Smasher had access to a series-personalized bathroom.

Yoshi found himself legitimately wondering whether male Pokémons had periodic times of the month as he decided to ward off the cold in the warmly tantalizing air of the Atrium. It was a spacious room that served its function best as a common meeting point for Smashers who wanted to spend their day out, due to its location at the very entrance of the mansion. Yoshi sprawled himself on the green sofas in the corner, willing his body to sink into its plushy comfort and bathing in the heat that it had absorbed. He stared at the walls, which were plastered with multi-colored posters that featured the silhouettes of each and every Smasher. Yoshi took particular pride in the fact that his, because of the designer's choice of creating tessellations of rectangles that varied in sizes, was one of the largest.

There were two elevators on the very back of the Atrium that provided access to the many floors of the Central Wing, and there were hallways that branched off into the West and East Wings of the mansion. For his deliveries Yoshi would have to make his way to the East Wing, which housed the Resident Building and all others related to general lifestyle, but at the time being Yoshi was just content to lie down and take a good long rest. There was nothing like kicking back and relaxing after a hectic day filled with adventures of huge pits and shopping and apples –

Ah, the apple!

Yoshi leapt up, heart pounding once again. How could he have forgotten? The apple was still inside of him, still attempting to assert its dominance in the limited space of his belly! Now that he was alone, getting rid of this would have to become his priority. The trash bin was right at the side of the door. All he would have to do would be to force the apple down to his rectum, where his digestive tracks would squirt a complicated mixture of organic chemicals to encase the apple in an egg, which he could then –

"Hi Yoshi."

"YOSHI!" Yoshi yelped in surprise as he turned to the intruding speaker, the apple shooting straight back up into his stomach. It was Link, clad in his usual garb of green cap and tunic, albeit with a flustered face of obvious frustration and desperation etched on his face. The Hylian began rummaging through the sofa, reaching his arm deep into the crevices.

"What are you doing here?" Yoshi asked, his tone a mixture of shock and annoyance.

"Looking for my Gale Boomerang." Link frowned and grunted as he withdrew his hand, which brought out nothing more than a giant quantity of dust. "I know I already asked, but you haven't seen it around lately, have you? I've got a match coming this Saturday, and I really think it'll help loads in my match-up against Marth if I could find it. I need all the projectiles I can get for that melee swordsman."

Yoshi shook his head. "Sorry, haven't seen it recently." Which was the truth, in the literal definition of the word 'see'. "But, you know, I bet if you offered a reward for it, pretty soon people might start feeling more motivated to find it and return it to you…"

Link laughed. "Nah, it'll turn up sooner or later. Besides, I believe in the honesty of the Smashers. I'm sure once someone finds it, the first thing he'll do is to return it to me immediately!" And with that imbecilic level of optimism, the Hero of Courage once again began his quest of rummaging through the helpless furniture of the Atrium.

Yoshi picked up the bags. Well, so much for privacy. The one place where he knew he could be safely alone was in his own room, but if that was the case, he might as well get on with his delivery. Since the Smashers' rooms were organized in an alphabetical fashion, Yoshi lived on the highest floor, which meant that he would pass by the floor of every Smasher anyway.

He had walked the entire length of the Atrium and was just about to turn into the hallway that led to the East Wing when he heard a large CRASH! behind him.

He already knew what it was before he turned to look at it. Link had picked up a pot and shattered it into pieces on the green carpet. It probably didn't matter much to him that the pot happened to be the home of burgeoning pear tree, a gift for the Smash Mansion from the hometown of Villager, and was now lying uprooted in a heap of soil and shards of ceramic. Yoshi simply stared at Link, who looked back and shrugged.

"I was born this way, Yoshi."

"Did you really think your precious boomerang would have become plant food?"

"You never know with pots," Link said darkly. "Do me a favor and don't tell anyone I did this, yeah?"

Yoshi rolled his eyes. "Link, you're one of the three Nintendirectors here. I can't do anything to you even if I tried, because you'll just end up denying it and they'll believe you because you apparently _lead by example expected from the noble representatives of the Smash Mansion_ …"

"By golly, you're right! I'm _untouchable_!" And with that declaration of power, the esteemed bearer of the Triforce of Courage shouted a "Hyyyyyaaaa!" and performed a Spin Attack, ripping through the sofas and causing fluff to fly everywhere.

Yoshi shook his head and continued his walk on down the hall. It was true that Link could pretty much do as he pleased, due to his high position as one of the managers of the Smash Mansion, a role he shared with Mario and Samus. As long as neither of the other two caught him at it, Link was almost perfectly safe from the repercussions of destructive and unwarranted behavior – for there were no surveillance cameras in the Smash Mansion.

Of course, none of the three tended to abuse their positions of authority that much, but the fact that it was even an option readily available to them, the temptation of lording so much power over nearly all representatives from the worlds of Nintendo, were reasons enough for many of the Smashers to deeply covet their positions. Yoshi, personally, never cared for it at all – when Master Hand summoned the Original 12 to his office to decide which three should be the ones to follow in his _finger_ steps and take over the Smash Mansion, he and Ness were the only two not to go. Good thing too, because the aftermath of the carnage involved half of Luigi's moustache torn straight off, a limp that severely hindered Donkey Kong's ground game for a month, and an unpleasant sight of witnessing Captain Falcon pass Capsules through the bottom end of his digestive system.

Speaking of digestive system…

Yoshi's stomach ripped loose a primal roar as it demanded food, food, food. Hasn't it been clamoring long enough, dammit? Three hours gone by and not a single ounce of delectable treats to digest! Yoshi gulped, his tongue salivating like a towel drenched to every fabric of its material. Even the small bulbs of light on the ceiling were beginning to look like irresistible balls of incandescent candies… Yoshi groaned as he felt his vision swimming. It was all he took to not shoot out his tongue and unscrew the bulbs. Three hours of starvation were much too much for a Yoshi… The bags dropped to the floor… Swimming swimming swimming his head was… Spilling on the floor contents… Food? Fooffood? Where needed food smellthefood eatthefood eatallthefood everything erhthignfhae eofd FOOD CHOMP CHOMP CHOMP!

* * *

There was a knock on the Kitchen door.

"Come in!" Kirby cried, stopping the flow of water over the sieve of Red Starbursts he was washing.

In walked Yoshi, arms laden with the things Lucario had bought.

"Hiiiii! There you are!" Kirby said delightedly. "You know, I was just about to go and look for you. I was starting to think you and Lucario forgot to buy them or something!" He dried his stubby hands on a star-patterned handtowel as Yoshi laid the brown grocery bag on the counter. "You got all the Shell Blades I needed for today's dinner right? Gonna cook up some piping hot clam chowder to warm things up a bit!"

"Yeah! Yeah, we – we bought them!" Yoshi said with forced heartiness and cheer. He had already whipped around and was on his way to the door as Kirby finished drying up. "Clam chowder sounds delicious! And I'd love to stay and chat, but I really have to get the rest of these things delivered to everyone else, so see ya!"

"Um. Uh. Thanks?" Kirby raised his voice after Yoshi's retreating figure, taken aback by the brevity of their greeting. He had been hoping for a small conversation, at the very least, to ease up a little bit before undertaking the daily challenge of cooking up a meal of quality and quantity that could feed the fifty-odd mouths that hungered for his cooking. Perhaps it was for the best, though. There was only an hour and a half until the Smasher's dinnertime, and the only progress Kirby had made so far were washing the Red Starbursts and chopping up some of the Pik Pik carrots. Kirby walked over to the counter, humming the tune of Butter Building as he looked into the bag, expecting the glorious sight of twenty pounds worth of frozen muscles of the ferocious Zelda mussels…

"YOSHI!"

"Shit, almost!" Yoshi cursed as he darted out of the door. He was just about to slam it behind him when a sudden gust of wind wrenched the handle from his grip, flinging the door backwards and putting a dead end to his dashing. A vortex of swirling air began to pull him back, blowing away the bag of items that the Smashers had ordered along with any hopes of escape. Yoshi sighed and stopped putting up resistance, instead investing all his concentration into the precise timing of the jump that years of duking it out against the pink puffball had instilled in him.

Just before he would lose his footing and be sucked into the deep dark depths of Kirby's mouth, Yoshi jumped, allowing the backwards momentum of the wind to propel his body behind the spherical vacuum cleaner. He landed with relative stability, scooping up the bag that had been blown away from his grasp as Kirby stopped sucking and turned to face the dinosaur with a body rapidly inflating from the pinkest rage imaginable.

"Explain!" he squeaked in his high-pitch voice as he threw the empty bag to Yoshi's feet.

Yoshi rubbed the back of his head and looked down at the bag. "I – Well, I wasn't lying when I said we bought it…"

"Yeah? Well, it's empty now! So where is it, poyo? I suppose the _magical clam_ _Toadies_ upped and snatched them away…"

Yoshi cocked his head. "Really?"

"No, you green heap of dinosaur diarrhea, you ate them all!" Kirby shrilled, still just as incapable of picking up the slight intricacies of sarcasm, despite being an expert user of it himself. Yoshi tried his best not to laugh as he began to apologize. "Kirby, I'm really, really sorry, man. It's just… You know me. I didn't eat for a long time, so I went on one of those binge-eating panic attacks again. It… It's all because I'm a dinosaur, man. I'm still not functionally evolved yet to know the difference between being hungry and starving to death…" Yoshi shook the bag of merchandise in his arms. "I mean, it took all my power to keep me from continuing to scarf down the rest of these things we bought."

"I don't care! What am I going to do?! I promised clam chowder on the menu for dinner tonight, and now everyone's going to think I'm a liar! My reputation as a chef is ruined!"

"Can't you just cook it anyway?"

"You stupid prehistoric giant-nosed oversized green bean! How do you cook clam chowder without clam?! That's like being in a Kirby game without arms or legs!"

There was a sudden silence as both Smashers realized the glaring flaw in Kirby's analogy of comparison.

"You get the idea," Kirby huffed. "And hey, it was a great game, OK?" And as an afterthought: "You baka poyo!"

"Like I said, I'm really, really sorry." And he actually meant it, too. Yoshi began looking around the Kitchen, looking for some hidden inspiration that could spark a feasible solution. Inside the open cupboard was a wide variety of small food and spices, ranging from jars of All-Purpose Baits to corked bottles of Sap Sac sap. Beside it was a pair of huge metal doors, entrance to the freezing labyrinth of food fit and enough for the consumption of the Smashers residing in the mansion. Kirby's golden cauldron, now retired from its days of stewing up Brawlers, sat right next to the counter, where Kirby had been washing the Red Starbursts just before Yoshi came in. And directly in between the sink and a basket of fruits (once again courtesy of Villager's hometown), with its long, juicy chains of meat snaking around the chopping board, was…

"Why not cook up some hot dogs? Everyone loves hot dogs!" Yoshi suggested as he pointed to the link of Bulborb sausages.

"I cooked hot dogs yesterday, and that was because Wario ate all the garlic he was supposed to deliver for my ultimate Maxim Tomato spaghetti and super-garlic bread combo! I thought _you_ would at least have a little more self-control!"

"Ah… Right…"

Kirby shot a glance at the clock. There was now an hour and twenty minutes left before the Smashers would gather in the Dining Room. "If you hurry back and buy them again, I should still be able to cook it in time," Kirby said, calming down enough to return his voice back to normal.

"You want me to go back out into that cold shit? No way!" Yoshi shook his head vigorously. "It's not my fault we operate on this stupid system. Why task the duty of buying enough food for at least fifty Smashers to just two? Wouldn't it be more convenient if you just ordered them in bulk?"

"We _do_ do that, but that fatbutt pig-penguin King Dedede nearly raided our entire supply a week ago, and our next shipment doesn't arrive until four days from now." Kirby puffed up with indignation at the very memory of it. "I tell that baby-sized illiterate fairy-jumping stinky Italian plumberman to buy an autolocking fridge, but does he ever listen? _Noooo_ …"

"What did you just call Mario?" Yoshi asked, not sure whether to fire up his loyalty in defense of his dearest friend or laugh at the sheer ridiculousness of Kirby's name-calling.

"Why does that matter? You still haven't told me how you're going to fix this, poyo!" Kirby walked over to Yoshi and grabbed him by the flesh of his lower jaw. "My reputation as the greatest chef Nintendo ever had is at stake here! You better go buy those Shell Blades, or I'm never going to make you my Kirby's Amazing Salad ever again!"

Of all the threats to pierce through Yoshi's thick hide of boldness and recklessness, it was the promise of a withheld meal to successfully infiltrate his perennially indifferent attitude and strike real fear into his heart. Yoshi let out a dramatic gasp. To never again experience the pleasures that exploded in his mouth the moment the first bite made contact with his tongue would be pure, pure torture. For the fruit salad was just that – Amazing. It was the botanic melting pot of all the best fruits and vegetables that the worlds of Nintendo had to offer – the sweetest, most fullest Berries that not even Yoshi could find (despite his and the fruit's common game of origination), balanced by just a slight mesh of sour Foul Fruits, mixed together with one or two Stamina Fruits that was bound to cure any food coma. Whatever other imbalance in tastes there might be was immediately rectified by the calculated usage of Pokémon berries – Yoshi could identify Rawst, Pinap, and Mago out of the myriad that Kirby used. To keep it from being completely biased to fruits, Kirby threw in a healthy dose of vegetables, many of which were salvaged from the freezing tundra of the mountains that the Ice Climbers regularly conquered, adding a delectably cold crunch to the meal. The eggplants, in particular, were further harvested from the transformative power of the best Eggplant Wizard that Palutena knew, though who was the unfortunate soul to be turned into the eggplant was beyond anyone. And of course, it wouldn't be a Kirby dish without any contributions from the eponymous chef's home, and therefore Whispy's apples and Maxim tomatoes ("I don't care what you botanists call it, it's a vegetable to us cooks!" yelled Kirby once) were used in generous amounts. All this was complemented by the perfect fruits of various Animal Crossing villages and a single Golden Sunseed and Golden Grenade, imparting on the dish a glimmering gaudiness that could only be fit for the golden tongues of royalty.

Kirby had been making it for Yoshi's birthday since the last two years, and Yoshi still remembered the exact details of his virgin bite: An explosion of rich, colorful flavors that blossomed spots of sweet and sour and bitter and salty and spicy and dry intersecting and converging all at once, a manifestation of glorious sex as a sense of taste prescribed to the dancing tastebuds of his undulating tongue. Yoshi wept and wept as he chewed, chewed, chewed, savoring every last bite, every tiny morsel, until the slosh in his mouth had been sucked dry of all flavors and he was forced to allow death do them part and swallow the moist pulp. It was a pivotal moment in his life that taught Yoshi his most important lesson: That the stairway to heaven lied not on the whispering wind but rather existed as a pair of pink stubby hands, hands which held the power to transpose this divine dimension into the mortal confines of the humble dinosaur's mouth, even if it was only for the briefest of minutes.

To deprive Yoshi of Kirby's Amazing Salad would, quite simply put, be equivalent to pushing him into the deepest depths of hell.

"Y-you wouldn't," Yoshi whispered in horror, eyes growing wider and wider.

"Try me, you baka poYoshi," Kirby snorted.

For just a split second Yoshi simply stared back at Kirby, eyes wide, mouth open. Then, dropping the things he was supposed to be delivering onto the floor, he dashed straight past Kirby and bolted out the door, at a velocity so frighteningly fast that mushroom clouds of dust stirred up behind him, despite the fact that Kirby had ensured the Kitchen was thoroughly spick and span before commencing his cooking. Within ten minutes the dinosaur was back, panting madly with his tongue touching the floor as he set the bag of newly-bought Shell Blades onto the counter.

"Thank you Yoshi," Kirby spoke in an overly-saccharine voice as Yoshi plopped to the floor. With large interruptions of great gasps of air, Yoshi wheezed:

"So – I – still – get – my – birth – day – sal – ad – right?"

"Yeah, yeah," Kirby smirked as he began to thaw the Shell Blades under cold water. "You are way too easy, you gluttonous hunk of dinosaur meat sick with envy."

Yoshi closed his eyes and ignored Kirby's last words as he bathed in the relief of a rescued meal. He wasn't even going to _try_ to decipher what the hell Kirby was insulting him for this time.


	5. A Change of Plans

With a great heave of a sigh, Lucario slowly submerged his body into the lime-yellow waters of the bath that he had prepared. Upon contact the winter chill that had tenaciously trapped itself in the folds of his fur was instantly vaporized. The waters bled translucent fluids of white vapor into the air, casting a thin coat of mist over all things in the _Pokémon_ Bathroom and reducing Lucario to a ghostly silhouette to any eyes that might gaze through the haze of steam.

He was bathing in what was literally the lower hemisphere of a giant Dive Ball. The domed, hollowed stone was stylistically painted varying shades of blue to match the actual thing, and even the horizontal split of the otherwise circular button adorned the very center of the ball. Submerged seats jutted out from the interior of the tub halfway down its curvature, and jets of warm bubbles streaked from the very bottom, expanding into transparent blobs of trapped, heated air before exploding into nothing at the very surface. The water took on a delicate shade of yellow because Lucario had adjusted a machine that added Berry extracts to the water, so that it was currently dispensing extract of Aspear (thaw out the Freeze and beat the cold!). Other Berry extracts included Oran (a bath good enough to drink!), Chesto (wake up from your Sleep and relieve the fatigue!), and Salac (Feeling weak and slow? Boost up your Speed for one last show of strength!). Should Lucario wish, he could press the semicircle button to raise up the upper hemisphere of the Jacuzzi, which was made of glass and was correspondingly painted to match the other half of the Dive Ball. The completed Dive Ball functioned as a way to trap the steam and create a steambath, though at present Lucario did not enlist its service.

A rectangular aquarium stretched over the entire area of the wall in front of Lucario, and he lost himself gazing at the rich diversity of the Water Pokémon that called it their home. Clampearls, Staryus, and Starmies rested near-motionless on the bottom, the pearls of the former and the red jewels of the latter two sparkling and shimmering in the light that filtered through. Corpfish scuttled through their stationary bodies and snapped their pincers at some of the fish that swam above – schools of beautifully-painted Goldeens and Seakings, accompanied by the graceful flaps of the fins of Finneons and Lumineons. Two or three Qwilfish would drift on by, bodies inflating randomly and rapidly to the slightest changes in their environment, and a lone Alomomola floated in whichever direction the currents manufactured in the aquarium dictated it to go. It watched over its fellow inhabitants with a motherly eye, as if on the constant lookout for discomfort or injury. Lucario found himself muttering 'Hello' into each of the Pokemons' brains, and though there was no way they could reply, they replied to his greeting through the subtle flick of a tail fin, a slight nod of the head in his direction.

A Bubble Beam Machine shaped like a Poliwhirl rested against the far right corner of the Bathroom, which fired bubbles from the swirl of its belly when activated. Pikachu and Jigglypuff often used it as blissfully childish forms of entertainment, while Greninja used it as a ninja test to avoid being hit by any of the bubbles. There were at least ten showerheads occupying the wall opposite the aquarium, and a pond-like structure, complete with grass, stones, and a few bushes, in the very center of the Bathroom, served as a mock natural environment for the Pokémon Smashers to take a bath.

Each Smasher owned his or her own restroom in their own designated living place, but it was greatly limited in facilities, stripped to the bare essentials of a simple toilet, a square showerstand, and a small sink. In contrast, the Bathrooms – distinguished from their far smaller counterparts by a capital 'B' in name – sacrificed privacy and personal ownership for a prodigious increase in size and such functionalities as above. In general, each Bathroom was shared among local characters of the same universe – Lucario, for instance, used his along with Pikachu, Jigglypuff, Greninja, Mewtwo, and technically Charizard, though she predictably tended to avoid anything that had to do with water at all costs. The only notable exception to this was the _Koopa_ Bathroom, which operated independently of the _Mario_ one – understandably so, as congestion and overuse would be sure consequences if Bowser and his octuplet of children decided to use the same facility as the core _Mario_ characters. Should more than one sex hail from the common game of origin, the Bathroom was further divided into two, replicate in the quality and the type of the equipment within but varying in size dependent on the respective number of male and female characters. This time, the _Pokémon_ Bathroom served as an outlier to this rule, as Lucario and the others were in unanimous consensus that gender should not be a reason for segregation. It was therefore not uncommon for male and female Pokémon Smashers to strip away all human concepts of modesty and decency and use their Bathroom simultaneously and unabashedly.

It was also the reason why Lucario felt no embarrassment or outrage whatsoever when Greninja suddenly shot out of the opening of the aquarium and landed, with an almost dignified _splish_ , right opposite of Lucario.

" _Bonjour_ , Lucario," the ninja frog greeted in her throaty Kalos accent. "Deed I scare you?"

Lucario shook his head. 'Detected you with my Aura the moment I came in.'

"Eet ees very troublesome, zis Ah- _Oo_ - _Rr_ ah," Greninja remarked disdainfully as she floated her webbed hand over the water, coaxing drops of water to defy gravity and rise upwards to form a swirling vortex in mid-air. "We wat- _air neen_ jas work 'ard to disguise ourselves, but your ability, eet makes even ze best stehlss and sleuss useless." The water pulsed rapidly about its center, spinning and compacting to form the trademark shuriken, which could only grow larger in size as Greninja continued to amass water into its shape. "Eet ees a tool zat requires no skill to mast- _air_ , unlike ze 'ighly esteemed ways of ze _neen_ jas."

'I think it simply shows the vast inferiority of you Dark-type Pokémons compared to the real strengths of us Fighting-types,' Lucario smirked.

" _C'est n'importe quoi_!" Greninja shot the shuriken, now the size of balled-up fist, straight at Lucario's face. The Aura Pokémon lifted up a paw and disintegrated the weapon back to its fluid state with a lazy Force Palm.

"Alomomola sinks you look tired," Greninja said, voice still dripping with haughtiness as she began to fire tiny shurikens of water vertically upwards from the bath. "She ees asking me eef you 'ad a long day."

'As long as it gets,' Lucario muttered darkly as he deflected the path of one of the shurikens with an equally tiny Aura Sphere. 'Of all the partners I have to go shopping with and it has to be that _idiot_ dinosaur.'

Though it was only barely visible behind the scarf of her tongue, Greninja smiled, for she knew just how much Lucario deplored the childish behaviors of some of the younger Smashers. "Yoshi? What deed 'e do zis time?"

'Well, let's see.' Lucario pushed his back up the walls of the bath. 'First he completely disregards his duty and selfishly runs off to eat, leaving me to buy everything by myself. Then he makes a complete fool of himself and ruins our entire reputation by pretending to be a hallucinating maniac. And then he goes and pushes the both of us down a hole the size of the Elite Four, _because he just wanted to have fun_. Never – '

"Sorry," Greninja interrupted, frowning as she bent over the sides of the tub to reach for something, "but deed you say zat zere was a 'ole ze size of ze Elite Four? 'Ow ees zat possible?"

'Some idiot buried millions of Pitfalls in the middle of the damn road, and when I say millions, I literally mean millions. Probably someone with the same inane sense of humor that dinosaur has. If I could just get my claws on him –"

"'E ees but a child, Lucario."

'What are you talking about? He's older than Mario!'

"But 'e ees a Yoshi, a dinosaur. Zey live for a very long time. I believe zat Yoshi 'as not even entered 'is teenage years yet."

'Well, he still annoys the living daylight out of me,' Lucario retorted as he turned back to adjust the temperature of the water – it was getting a bit too hot for his liking. ' _What_ Samus was thinking when she paired the two of us, I – must you do that here?!'

For Greninja was puffing away on a Bayleef cigar, having lighted the green fat bud with a Hidden Power Fire. She used one hand to push down her tongue while the other helped to balance the cigar on her lower lip. She inhaled deeply, causing the fiery end of the bud to glow a blood red, before proceeding to ash over the sides of the Dive Ball.

"I am from Kalos, Lucario," she said, exhaling an aromatic smoke into Lucario's face as she did. "Just as ze Froakie at ze bottom of ze well sings sad songs of passing, so must I smoke a cigarette at least sree times by ze hour."

'That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever,' Lucario shot back as he began to cough violently. The smoke had the typical smell of burning tobacco to it, but it was tinged with a spicy waft of a slightly jarring aroma, and the very sniff of it immediately invigorated Lucario's muscles and made him want to get up, to cease all lethargy and embark on activities of pure physical stimulation. Greninja, who had been smoking Bayleef cigars for far too long now, was all but immune to the effects, but Lucario was at least a thousand smokes away before he could even dream of resisting all urges to get up and move move _move_.

'Thanks for ruining my bath,' Lucario snapped as he stood up instantly. It took all his power to not Extreme Speed away from the Dive Ball, and even as he walked to the exit he couldn't help but break into a brisk gait. Greninja simply smiled and sank deeper into the waters, still puffing away at her Bayleef cigar, still shooting flecks of Shurikens up to the ceiling.

* * *

"Hey Olimar! Olimar!" Yoshi yelled as he knocked furiously on the Hocotatian's door. He was down to the last item of his delivery already, and the apple was currently positioned in his stomach so that it kept in direct contact with his body, unhindered by the assortment of objects he kept inside him. The constant cold was a sharp reminder of what he still had inside of him, and all Yoshi could think about was getting it out of his body as soon as possible. The anticipation was made even worse by the fact that he only had a dinky space helmet to deliver before he could retreat into the privacy of his room, but no reply came from the other side of the door even as Yoshi attacked it with a barrage of knocks.

"Dammit!" Yoshi kicked the door furiously and looked down at the helmet. It was exactly like the one Olimar wore around his head, so why he needed an exact copy was beyond Yoshi. He was considering simply leaving the helmet by the door and leaving it at that when the door suddenly opened.

" _Finally_!" Yoshi shoved the helmet into the confused Olimar's arms and glared down at the suited explorer. "What were you doing in there, man? I was knocking for like, five fucking minutes!"

"I was taking a nap," Olimar said blearily as he looked down at the helmet in his hands as if it was some foreign object. "Can't you tell by my eyes?"

"Ummm…" Yoshi deliberated over the words he was ever so desperate to say before he decided that he had offended enough Smashers for the day. "…Yeah, yeah. I can totally tell now. My b." He was just about to turn around and walk away when curiosity got the better of him. "What do you need an extra helmet for anyway?"

"C-c-c-" here Olimar failed to stifle a Bulborb of a yawn "-crack. See?" Olimar tapped the bottom right of the helmet, near where his right cheek was. If Yoshi squinted hard enough, he could just barely make out the tiniest fissure. "It may not seem like a big deal, but even the smallest damage to any part of my spacesuit must immediately be addressed. My planet of origin is inherently lacking in oxygen within its atmosphere, and therefore does not grant me the biological privilege of developing a respiratory system that utilizes the pervasively abundant gas here as a base ingredient for many of the bodily functions that the native creatures of this world have evolved to adapt to, including, but not limited to –"

"Very interesting," Yoshi interrupted hurriedly, "but I gotta run now, so… See ya!" And without another word or a second turn Yoshi immediately stalked off, leaving a confused Olimar to experience the pain of killing scientific words of poetry that were ready to burst forth from his throat. He sighed and closed the door, sealing himself in a small chamber that was blocked off from the main body of his room by another door. He flicked a switch, thus draining in this limited space all the oxygen so that once the oxygen level of the area matched that of Hocotate, he could open the door back to his room and enjoy the rest of the afternoon with his spacesuit off.

Yoshi, of course, did not need such an oxygen-draining chamber in his room, being a regular denizen of the planet. It was instead characterized by whimsically childish and innocent crayon drawings that brought the walls to life. The wall directly opposite the door, for instance, depicted curved hills that smiled eternally among stationary fluffs of rolling clouds. The base of the hills was surrounded by puffs and tufts of mellow yellow grass, out of which stalks of orange-tinted flowers grew. Other illustrated citizens of the walls of Yoshi's room included flying Goonies and blowing Gusties, a varied selection of monochromatic Shuguys walking aimlessly on the ground, and, somewhat terrifyingly, a large ball of a Chain Chomp on the right wall, complete with pitch-black body, saucer eyes that never closed, and white-hot teeth that seemed to thirst for flesh to sink into.

In addition to being a riot of colors, Yoshi's room was also a riot of trash and disorganization. Under the Egg Block near the lower-left corner of the room was a cluttered heap of candy wrappers that had missed their mark to the Warp Pipe-shaped trashcan. Fixed to the center of the right wall was a wheel of yellow platforms, the kind that rotated clockwise or anti-clockwise depending on which platform Yoshi was standing on. It was supposed to be a tool that promoted organization, a shelf of some sort that could easily be cycled through by pushing down on one of the platforms and allowed one to place items of the same practicality on a single platform. Yoshi, however, had simply placed whatever was in his hands on the nearest available platform, resulting in a random assortment of objects that did not exude any obvious common ground of functionality. And right in the middle of the floor, littering the circular arena of soft dirt that Yoshi called his bed, was a rich diversity of fruits, some full, others half-finished: Bananas, coconuts, grapes, watermelons, durians, papayas, melons, a single red hot chili pepper that seemed to universally speak of its spiciness. There were even apples that were, of course, far less pernicious than the one in Yoshi's belly.

Which served as a redundant reminder as to what Yoshi had to do. He looked behind, ensuring that the door was absolutely closed. It was; there would be no more intrusions of privacy. He took a deep breath. For no reason at all, his heart was working itself up again, the slow beat steadily evolving into a faster rhythm. Before he allowed himself to hesitate any longer, Yoshi quickly contracted his muscles and forced the apple down to his rectum. In a single second there was a pop, and it was over: The apple was out of his stomach, and with its departure there was a sudden hush of warmth that sank into every nerve receptor of his stomach.

With an almost fearful eye Yoshi looked at the egg. It was immediately disconcerting because the spots on the egg were a dark red rather than the typical green, with each spot possessing an almost shimmery quality not unlike that of what it encased. For an instant Yoshi thought that the plan had failed miserably, that he would find himself lunging forward and shove the egg into mouth – but the split malaise of paranoia disappeared almost as suddenly as it had struck, and Yoshi closed his eyes and continued to breathe deeply. Calm down, calm down… You're alright. Nothing happened. It worked, it worked, it worked. You've won, and there's nothing to be worried about anymore.

Everything's gonna be OK, everything's gonna be alright.

His heart was still firing wincing stabs of anxiety into his stomach, but Yoshi was at relative ease and stability when he opened his eyes and observed the egg. Other than its bloody color, it was perfectly unremarkable and innocent – balancing on its slightly bumped bottom, a three-dimensional ellipse that was slightly squashed at one end, unmoving and uncaring. It seemed to blend almost naturally with the rest of Yoshi's room, the newest addition of some prized souvenir to be displayed proudly and obviously on a shelf.

Yoshi picked up the egg – gently and slowly – and opened the window. Ignoring the blast of cold wind, Yoshi adopted a shooting position, one foot raised in the air as he gripped the egg's bottom tightly in his right hand. He was going to chuck away the damn thing, to throw it so far that it would have to traverse half the world's diameter just to come back to him…

…What was he thinking?

Yoshi set the egg down and closed the window. 'That,' he thought grimly as he walked back to the bed, 'would have been a bad idea.' And it really would have been. Who was to stop anyone from finding the apple the moment the egg shattered upon impact? Yoshi was certain that the apple would exert its power of possession the moment its visibility became unobstructed by the protective, yet laughably fragile shell of the egg. And what then? What would happen if someone – even if it wasn't him – happened to fulfill the apple's (or whatever was inside the apple – Yoshi refused to taint the good name of the tasty fruit any longer) desired prophecy and consumed its body? What evil forces would be unlocked, what hell would be unleashed upon the world? That was the immutable law of video games, that the ability to demonstrate an overwhelming capacity for bodily domination would result in such deleterious ramifications. For all he knew, the fact that the dark soul now lurked within two layers of mortal shields could very well be the last thread of a snapping rope.

He would have to dispose of the egg, then, in a manner that preserved its integrity and structure. Yet the more Yoshi wracked his brains for a solution, the more he became convinced that it was impossible. If he threw it away into a trashcan, he was effectively exposing the egg to a barrage of thrown items that could easily shatter its exterior and expose the devilish yolk within. The next time someone opened up the can or just happened to take a peek inside, all feelings of disgust, no matter how powerful, would prove to be instantly futile as that someone would sneak his hand into the trash, grab the fruit, and take a large bite out of the bulbous bag of flesh and juice and pure evil…

Paranoia was beginning to take a hold of his thoughts again, but this time it was perfectly warranted, an almost logical kind of paranoia. As long as there existed even the slightest chance, he could not risk throwing the egg into the garbage. Every Smasher would be susceptible to seeing it then, even the friendly garbage Toads when they came to collect the heaps and heaps of the daily wastes of the Smashers. The direness of the problem was further compounded by the fact that the egg shell would decay in a week, growing ever more delicate and black by the passing hour until it finally disintegrated into a rot of charred protein. And if that happened…

Yoshi shuddered as the darkness of the impending evening oozed into his room. It was closing in all around him, and, too worked-up to get up and turn on the light, Yoshi felt his eyes drawn to the only source of visibility in the room. The egg continued to glow from its red spots, ugly scars of sinister intent that seemed to diffuse the foulness of its content throughout the room. Random bursts of possible solutions were exploding in Yoshi's brains now – digging the egg into the ground, hiding it someplace in the mansion, throw it into fire… But the ideas were snuffed before they could even take a firm hold. Nothing was safe in the ground, what with Villager's shovel and Duck Hunt Dog's penchant for digging; no place was truly private and unknown to the collective knowledge of the Smashers. As for throwing it into fire, that was ridiculous. Whatever was locked inside the apple would be able to free itself without even requiring the teeth and digestive juices of the mortal it wanted to possess.

Was this the end, then? Had he merely delayed the inevitable, was he simply stalling the victory of his opponent with futile moves of pathetic insignificance? Was it he, Yoshi, who had released what was quite possibly the greatest evil of all time?

Yoshi threw himself onto his bed. He was just about to scream from the hopelessness and the frustration of it all when another sound stopped him.

"Hm hm hmm, hm hm hmm, hm hm hm hmm hmmmm hm hm hm hm hmmmm, duh duh duh duh~" a mellifluous, feminine voice sang past Yoshi's door. It was Zelda, humming the tune of Saria's Song as she made her way back to her room. With her name starting with 'z', she was the only Smasher who came after Yoshi in the alphabetical order of their residences. Their closeness, however, only extended itself to the physical proximity of their sleeping places. They were simply far too different in character and interests to produce any meaningful interactions, which recently had been nothing more than simple "Hi's" and "Bye's". Yoshi suspected that Zelda had still not fully forgiven him for that one time when he and Ness stole two of her Light Arrows and used them as lightsabers in what was supposed to be a serious practice match against Marth and Ike…

Wait… Light Arrows!

Yoshi got up instantly. _That was it_! Light Arrows! Toon Link had explained that they were the most powerful weapons of all in _Zelda_ , an arrow that was infused with the sacred powers of good and holiness in order to pierce through the thick hide of evil and obliterate the darkness within. What if – _what if_ the Light Arrows could be used against the apple? There was no reason for it not to work! The apple had displayed its capacity for the blackest evil just by presenting itself to those who laid its eyes on it. Surely the evil that was trapped within was certainly equal to that of the several foes of Link and Zelda that had met their demises at the gleaming point of the Light Arrow – if not even more! Yoshi's heart was thundering with excitement now as he got up and walked giddily around his room. Why didn't he think of this before? All he had to was to ask Zelda to keep a secret, and then she would be more than willing to comply and –!

Wait, wait, no. No, she wouldn't.

Yoshi felt the internal balloon of optimism deflate back into its flaccid state. Zelda would not believe him. Who would? He was a prankster, a troublemaker in the eyes of everyone, even his own friends. Zelda would find a story about a mysterious apple, looted from the dark depths of a shopping mall, which could force anyone that saw it to eat it, laughably ridiculous. And even if she did somehow believe his story, would she believe it after he pointed to the egg and told her to fire one of her precious, limited Light Arrows at _that_? Showing the apple was the only way for anyone to believe that a great evil was indeed present within the egg, but that was, for obvious reasons, out of the question. So was stealing the Light Arrows – Zelda had taken extra precaution ever since his and Ness's theft and kept them completely hidden, never to be found again except when she needed them for her Final Smash. He thought about asking Toon Link for his supply, but Toon Link, despite being a friend, was almost equally certain to refuse – in addition to having to place faith by the words of a habitual liar, the Hero of Wind would have to travel back to Outset Island just to retrieve the holy weapons, a journey which would surely take longer than the week it took for the egg to decay.

Someone else, then. Yoshi refused to admit defeat, not when he was so close to wrapping his tongue around delicious victory. He closed his eyes and pored through every single Smasher that jumped to his mind. Mario, Wii Fit Trainer, Falco, Rosalina… Yoshi shook his head and tried again. Too random… Who else fired arrows? Link? He was as much help as Zelda… Pit? Definitely not… What he needed was an equivalent to the intangible forces of evil that was only an egg away from releasing the fullest extent to its power, the yang to the yin which could serve as its banishment from existence once and for all. Did Pit have that? No, he was just an angsty teenager with social problems and a religious devotion to Palutena that bordered on the edges of insane obsession. What could he possibly have that –

"Palutena!" Yoshi shouted, before grabbing a slice of watermelon and stuffing it into his mouth.

The Goddess of Light! How could he forget? She was the Goddess of _Light_ , for Birdo's sake… And she was a _Goddess_ … Crimson juice of fructose streamed down Yoshi's chin as he got up and began to pace around his room again. Unlike all the other lady Smashers, he was actually on OK terms with Palutena, who had yet to be on the receiving ends of his jokes and pranks and thought he was just too adorably cute… And he was, who could deny that? Wait, wait, not the point. Yoshi pounded a fist against an open palm. This was it. He had finally found a solution. He was almost certain that, as a frickin' _Goddess_ , Palutena would be more than capable of detecting the demon within the apple without even having to listen to Yoshi's story or see through the egg. He had once overheard her complaining about the amount of sheer evil she could sense emanating from Ganondorf, so why should this apple be any different? And she wasn't just any Goddess – she was the Goddess of _Light_. She was a direct contrast to this concentrated evil that the apple embodied. No silly arrow was required of her to ward off the unwelcome darkness – all she had to rely on was her innate powers of good and light to fully eradicate the demon within, or at the very least, weaken its strength so that it no longer posed any danger through the simple fact of its being, which would make dealing with it an infinitely easier task. Zelda? Light Arrows? Pah! Who needed them when you had the all-powerful, all-seeing Goddess of Light by your side?

It was decided, then. Brimming with confidence in this new change of plans, Yoshi wasted no time in running out to see Lady Palutena – but not before scooping up all the fruits on his bed and shoving them into his mouth. He was still hungry, after all.


	6. Where's Your Goddess Now?

Still under the influence of the invigorating effects of Greninja's secondhand smoke, Lucario walked down the hall with a slight spring in his steps, unable to suppress the extra bursts of energy that propelled his feet. Perhaps this was for the best, though. He had promised Lucina a sparring match, which was due to begin in thirty minutes. The smoke, at the very least, was serving as an effective tool to get himself all warmed-up without much actual physical activity, and supplying much-needed energy to his muscles that were still in a lethargic stupor from the bath.

For the practice he would have to go to the Central Wing. It was no architectural coincidence that all the elements of Smash Bros. that everyone came to know and love about the franchise were housed right in the middle of the mansion. That was where the Tournament Hall was, a huge room that contained the portals to transport the Smashers to the stages they were to fight on. It earned its name due to the fact that it was absolutely jam-packed during the monthly tournament season, where in which every Smasher was required to participate and every battle was broadcast over the entire Nintendo universe for all to watch. Far less frequently used but still important to the core Smash Bros. series were the side things – Classic Mode, Break the Target, Multi-Man Mode, etc. And finally, just one floor above the Atrium, there were the hidden professional side of Smash, the faction that had to do with all the boring things to do with the franchise and the Smash Mansion: The Newcomers Association, The Veteran Organization, the three Nintendirectors' office.

Lucario did not intend to go to the Tournament Hall by foot. The Smash Mansion was of such sprawling dimensions that traveling within the mansion could be a journey that stretched for as long as two hours. Thankfully, the imperative economic practicality of time-saving was integrated into the architecture in a seamless manner, and located in strategic spots were the appropriate technologies to transport the Smashers to their destinations as quickly and efficiently as possible. In true Smash Bros. fashion, these devices hailed from a multitude of universes, and though Lucario was currently making his way to a Clear Pipe, there were other options available at different areas: Launch Stars, Pixelator Screens, Auto-Fire Barrels, Geysers, Grind Rails, Warp Pipes, Warp Holes, Warp Gates, even an inexhaustible supply of Escape Ropes in cupboards sprinkled throughout the mansion, should one desire an instantaneous method of escape to the outdoors.

But it wasn't the opening of a Clear Pipe that greeted Lucario when he rounded the corner. His chest was met with a strip of black-and-yellow tape, sectioning off the Clear Pipe from his use as Mario's blue overall-clad bottom blocked the opening from his view.

'Mario? Is there a problem?'

"A-Lucario!" Mario exclaimed in what was probably the most famous Italian accent in the world as he got up and wiped his forehead. Clenched in his other hand was a red wrench, while an equally red hammer lay by the side of the pipe. "It's a-broken. See?" Mario moved away, revealing that for some reason, the entrance to the Clear Pipe had sunk into the ground, so that only a tight semicircular hole jutted out from the floor that even Pikachu would have trouble squeezing through.

'Well, _that_ is just perfect,' Lucario muttered. The day just never stopped with its onslaught of annoyance and inconvenience, and Lucario could seriously feel his patience beginning to wear thin. 'Is there any way you can get it fixed within the next ten minutes or so? I have a sparring match against Lucina coming up, and I wouldn't want to keep her waiting.'

Mario guffawed. "Are you a-kidding? This will at least take me one hour to fix!" Mario picked up the hammer and, for some secret reason that could only make logical sense to a seasoned plumber, began to pound the pipe further into the ground. "If you are a-going to the Tournament Hall, it would be much faster for you to take the barrel downstairs anyway. This only takes you to Smash Run, while the barrel shoots you to the Tournament Hall directly."

'I hate the barrels. They make me feel sick.'

"Mama-mia! The whining Yoshi can't have its fruit and eat it, Lucario!"

'No, I guess it can't,' Lucario flared up as he suddenly remembered the events of today that he had sworn to tell Mario. 'I have something to tell you, actually. Yoshi and I went to the TnT Mall for our shopping duties for the first time –'

"Oh?" Mario turned to look at Lucario, eyes sparkling with interest as he did. "And a-how did you find it?"

'Absolutely terrible, and it's all because of that prehistoric friend of yours. He –'

"No, no," Mario interrupted, head shaking vigorously as he put up an open hand to halt Lucario, "I mean, how did you find the concept itself? Very genius, am I right?"

'Yes, it's very smart,' Lucario brushed off impatiently. He echoed Mario's words when he had first explained the job to those who applied for it: ' _Quick and reliable service so that our Smashers get the items they need in the same day, as opposed to waiting a week. Woohoo!_ Super good idea, but I was going to say –'

"A-Thank you, Lucario," Mario said cheerfully as he turned around, picking up the wrench and smacking aimlessly at the pipe. "I a-came up with it when I was waiting for my new plunger to arrive. I say to myself, 'A-mama-mia! The delivery is so slow! It has been a-longer than a week!' And then that is when I come up with it! Why not pay some of our own Smashers to a-personally buy what we need and bring them to us? We get our things faster, and some of us get a-money! Win-win! Woohoo! Mario number one!" He had to say all these as loudly as possible, in order to make himself heard over the clanging noise of the continuous impact that was blasting out of the pipe.

'Are you even going to listen to what I have to say?!' Lucario roared.

"What is it?"

'It's Yoshi! When he was supposed to be buying the things that you so _quickly_ and _reliably_ want us to buy, he ran away so that he could _eat_!' Lucario's chest puffed up with indignation, observing that Mario had not even batted an eye as he climbed atop the pipe and tried to pull it out with his bare hands. 'He's clearly only in it for the money. We don't need selfish Smashers like this in our team, Mario. I suggest you to take decisive action immediately, and by that I really mean fire his lazy and gluttonous ass.'

There was silence, except for Mario's grunts as he made no progress in prying the pipe from the floor.

'Well?!'

"A-Lucario!" Mario sighed as he jumped from the pipe in surrender. "Relax! Yoshi, he is a-just trying to have some fun!" Mario split a wide grin as the vertically-reversed equivalent stretched Lucario's muzzle into a bared snarl. "He really knows how to cheer you up, doesn't he? I remember once –"

This time it was Lucario who raised up an open paw and interrupt the other. 'Cut the crap. So, basically, you're telling me that Yoshi's keeping his job, and that he'll continue to be my partner for as long as both he and I are in this, right?'

Mario shrugged. "I a-don't see why not."

'Well, that does it then. I quit,' Lucario said flatly, and before Mario could say another word, he stalked off to the staircase where he would have no choice but to stuff himself inside the Auto-Fire Barrel and endure twelve seconds of turbulent motion.

Mario watched Lucario's back with a slightly open mouth before shrugging and getting back to work on the Clear Pipe.

"What a-is his problem?"

* * *

"Hey Palutena! Palutena!" Yoshi yelled as he knocked furiously on the Goddess of Light's door. Sheesh, what was it with people not answering their doors when he really needed them? Yoshi rapped at the door for what must have been a full minute, but still the door remained stubbornly shut. Either she wasn't in, or she was asleep like Olimar had been.

Or she didn't want to see him.

"I love your cooking!" Yoshi cried in one last desperate attempt.

Still no answer.

"Dammit!" Well, at least he could eliminate one of the three possibilities. Palutena's cooking was so atrocious that even Yoshi had second thoughts about ingesting it, so pretty much any validation for her cooking, however slight, would immediately grab her attention and dissolve away any abhorrence she might harbor. The fact that his praise did not elicit a response could only mean that she wasn't in, or she was too far deep in la-la land.

Yoshi gave up and walked down the corridor. He'd just have to catch her at dinnertime, then. Ask for a private word, tell her about everything, maybe bring her to his room if she didn't believe him…

"Hey Pit!"

The angel had just stepped out of the elevator as Yoshi was about to walk in, and Yoshi thanked his lucky eggs for the coincidental meeting. Pit was so devoted to his goddess that he was bound to know exactly where she was and what she was doing and how she was feeling and the rest of that divine bullcrap.

"Oh hello Yoshi," Pit greeted back cheerfully. "Would you like to join me for my bihourly prayer sessions?"

" _No_ ," Yoshi denied vehemently. "I just want to know… Where's your goddess now?"

Pit's eyes became so large that they rivaled Yoshi's in size for a record-breaking second. "Wha –" he stuttered, and then before Yoshi knew it, his neck was mere inches away from becoming sliced dinosaur sashimi as Pit grabbed him by the flesh of his chest and brandished the cleaved half of his bow against his throat.

"Palutena darn it, Pitoo! As if it wasn't completely unoriginal and lame of you to be my doppelganger. Now you're trying to become Yoshi's clone too!" Pit shook Yoshi into a green blur as he shouted, "Where's Yoshi and what have you done to him?!"

"I _am_ Yoshi, you religious nutbag!" Yoshi yelled back as he wrestled free from Pit's grip. "I just want to know where the fuck Palutena is right now! Is that too much to ask?!"

Pit lowered the blades of his bow, though he still stared at Yoshi with utmost suspicion. "You're absolutely sure you're not Pitoo?"

"Have you been blinded by the Light or something? Can't you tell I'm a fucking dinosaur and not some faggot-assed poseur emo angel?!"

Any doubts that Pit might have had were immediately laid to rest by the last few words of insult which a certain prideful clone would never utter. Pit broke into an apologetic grin as he linked the Sacred Bow of Palutena back together. "Oh man. I am so sorry, Yoshi. For a second there… What you said…" Pit scratched his chin as Yoshi crossed his arms and glared back, tapping his boot in impatience. "To answer your question, Lady Palutena's not in right now. She's back in Angel Land to address some mortal concerns in the Overworld…"

" _What_?!" Yoshi cried, jaw dropping in sheer disbelief as the information rammed into his brain with the monolithic force of a Cherubot. "She – she's not here?!"

At this Pit straightened up his back and threw his chest out in pride as he remarked, in an almost haughty and disdainful manner, "As a servant of the Goddess of Light, I can assure you, Yoshi, that Lady Palutena takes her divine duties and holy responsibilities with absolute seriousness! It should come as no surprise to you that she must often travel back to our world for the collective good of the mortals of Angel Land, who would surely be lost and helpless without her guidance and support! And in case –"

"When's she coming back?" Yoshi cut across swiftly, heart hammering against his ribcage, threatening to burst forth in a wild protest of dread. If it was anything longer than a week –!

"In five days. I was going to say –"

"Five days," Yoshi repeated, and with a great sigh of relief, the instantaneous weight that had suddenly rested upon his shoulders released him of its burden. Pit was rambling on and on about the importance of Lady Palutena's presence and the general ungrateful and ignorant attitudes of those who had not seen the Light, but Yoshi scarcely listened to a word. So Palutena would be gone for five days… Not much of a problem, the shell should be able to withstand the test of time for a full week. The only danger that posed itself now was if the egg managed to break before her arrival, in which case it would be immediate game over for everyone. He would have to keep it absolutely safe and far from harm, as if it was a baby he was saddling on his back… He would, ideally, have to stash it in a static environment completely devoid of change, where the threat of prying eyes and external interaction would be all but zero. That would immediately eliminate his room from the list of candidates, for which he was glad - he had no intention whatsoever to keep such a concentrated embodiment of evil so close to him and mar the tranquility of his own room. The question was, then, where would be the perfect hiding place for the egg that satisfied the criteria above? There were not many places in the Smash Mansion that could offer such a haven of isolation and safety…

"Why do you want to see her, anyway?" Pit's question, completely unexpected and directed at Yoshi with the sharpness of an accusation, immediately jolted the dinosaur out of his thoughts. "Wha – what?" Yoshi stammered back, caught off guard by the question to which he had no answer.

"Why do you want to see Lady Palutena? I know it's not because of her cooking – even you hate it," Pit said with a grimace, remembering all too well the completely disastrous recipes that Palutena had forced Pit to eat. It was, perhaps, the closest thing Pit ever got to blasphemy as even he refused to acknowledge Palutena's cooking as anything better than absolutely disgusting.

"I…" What should he say? That he needed Palutena's help in getting rid of the ultimate apple of evil? Right. And maybe they could engage in a war against sentient one-eyed vegetables while they were at it. "Oh, um. I… I'm kind of having thoughts about becoming a Palutenian…"

Anyone with half the typical requirements of common sense would immediately see through the lie and deduce that Yoshi was not quite telling the truth, but Pit, who had been sweating his wings off for the seven years he was part of Smash Bros. in an effort to convert everyone's religious faith to that of a Palutenian, was, perhaps somewhat understandably, taken completely aback by the words that tumbled carelessly out of Yoshi's mouth, words that the cynical shades of perennial failure had jaded him into thinking he would never hear except for in the deepest realms of his fantasies.

"You – You want to be a Palutenian? For real?" Pit said weakly.

"I…" Yoshi immediately regretted his words as he tried to negate the road of disastrous consequence he had paved for himself with that moment of sheer stupidity. "Well, actually, what I meant was –"

Pit would hear none of it. "Great!" he cheered as he grabbed Yoshi by the arm and led him to his room. "You can start right now by joining me for my prayers! I'm just so happy that you've decided to see the Light, Yoshi. What changed your mind?

"Pit…" Yoshi began.

"No, wait, don't tell me! You can tell it to Lady Palutena herself while we're praying! Remember, Yoshi, she likes to hear everything in moderation. She'll be more than happy to listen to your problems, but she does like it when you throw in an occasional compliment or two. You know, like how she's obviously much more waifu material than, say, that airheaded Peach. Or that mean old Samus – seriously, did you see how hard she kicked me with her heels last week? Ouch!"

"But Pit – "

"Oh, you have so much to learn! Free up your Wednesday evenings, by the way, because on Wednesdays we're supposed to eat the dinner Lady Palutena cooks for us instead. I – I – I'd say it's not exactly what you'd expect if you're used to the food Kirby cooks, but you know, you… You do get used to… To eggplant and carrot burger with a patty of the juiciest tofu and ginseng."

"That sounds disgusting," Yoshi said, mortified at the mutilated image of one of his favorite fast food that Pit had conjured in his mind. "What other requirements does Palutena force on you once you become a Palutenian?"

" _Lady_ Palutena, Yoshi. Don't be disrespectful! And I don't think of them as requirements so much as _fun_ little services!" They were nearing Pit's door now, and Yoshi was still desperately trying to think of an excuse to slip away from the mess he had gotten himself into. "Oh, and every Friday we have to give Lady Palutena a foot massage. She loves them!"

"A foot massage?" Yoshi asked, forgetting that he was supposed to be worming his way out of the situation. "Palutena makes you give her foot massages?"

"Yeah! You know, being a goddess, it's probably really taxing on her feet. She gets really into it, too. I've done it so long now, I think I'm the foot flipping master. Got my technique down and everything! Pull the feet back at the ankle, give the Achilles tendon a bit of a pull… Work my thumbs into ridges of her bones and squeeze the muscles a bit… Use my tongue to lick her toes cl –"

"Hold the fuck up," Yoshi interrupted. He brought an arm out to halt Pit in his tracks and turned sideways, so that the two were now face-to-face in the somewhat limited space of the corridor. "Palutena makes you _lick_ her feet?"

"Yeah! And she really loves it, too! She gives the funniest little moan whenever I wrap my tongue around the little ones…"

Yoshi recoiled in disgust as he stared at Pit with nothing but repulse. "And you call that a foot massage?"

"I… I guess it's not exactly a foot massage, but it certainly is in the same ballpark! Right?"

"No! How…" Yoshi could hardly believe what he was hearing. The mental depiction of a respectable lady impeccably cloaked in a topaz sheen of holiness was fast disintegrating into far more crude and disturbing imageries. "Now you listen to me… Giving a goddess her foot massage, and eating her toes out isn't the same fucking thing. It's not the same fucking ballpark, it's not the same league, it's not even the same fucking sport. It's… One is a foot massage. And Pit, I really hate to break it to you, but I think your goddess here just might have a little foot fet –"

Pit looked down at his wrist and, though he had no observable trait of a time-keeping device anywhere on him, suddenly blurted out, "Will you look at the time! We're already two minutes late for our prayers! Hurry, Yoshi – any later and we'll be guilty of a cardinal sin!" And before Yoshi could finish his sentence or let out a squeak of protest, Pit was pulling him into his room, leaving the dinosaur alone in picking up the pieces of the shattered impression of a once noble and dignified goddess.


	7. The (Perfick!) Hiding Place

"Come on, Lucina! Aim for his left! His _left_!" Robin egged, fighting to keep his voice under control as he watched the battle on the huge Smash Screen in the Tournament Hall. Dignified master tactician as he was, Robin could not help but raise his voice at the screening of his fellow Fire Emblem comrade's match against Lucario, despite knowing full well that the screen had no way of communicating his words to the battlers.

Both Smashers were currently down to one stock, with Lucario sitting fairly comfortably at 67%, while Lucina lagged behind at 108%. Having the percent lead, Lucario could afford to play the keepaway game, never committing to overly-zealous options, forcing Lucina to be the one to approach and batting her away with his Aura-infused punches and kicks whenever she did, waiting for the perfect moment to land a powerful smash or aerial should the opportunity arise to do so. If she failed to approach in time or stayed away in an effort to bait Lucario to move, the Pokémon would simply shoot minute balls of his Aura Sphere as an effective tool to tack on some damage and force an approach.

"Troublesome rat!" Lucina cursed as she narrowly sidestepped an Aura Sphere shootings its way to her. Deciding that she could not stall any longer, Lucina dashed forward as Lucario began to charge another ball of Aura, sweeping her sword in a diagonal slash upwards straight at Lucario's chest. Unfortunately for her, Lucario reacted fast enough to store away the Aura and adopt his counter-stance – one leg up, both arms outstretched, body bent slightly. For the briefest second an apparition of this martial form flickered before her very eyes, defiantly contradicting the fact that she had just swiped past him with her sword. Luckily for Lucina, she had only just nicked the Double Teaming Lucario at the end of her attack, and thus had enough time to protect herself behind a shield as Lucario attempted to ram into her with his foot from behind a second later. He flew past her, chipping away at Lucina's bubble of pink protective energy but not doing anything else. Safely behind the hurtling Lucario, Lucina immediately dropped her shield and ran towards him with her Falchion slicing into the ground of the Battlefield.

"Take that!" Lucina jumped lightly and performed a quick double-succession of horizontal slashes that covered both her sides. The first strike slashed into Lucario, and he felt his back sear up in pain as he was popped into the air. His fall was quickly broken by the lower right platform of the Battlefield, but the landing turned out to be deeply unfavorable for Lucario, for Lucina, predicting where he was going to fall, had positioned herself directly below the platform and struck his belly with an upward thrust of an uncharged up smash.

"Arrhhh!" Lucario let out a deep wince of pain as he was fired up into the air again, this time vertically. Lucina's sudden success in infiltrating his walls of Aura didn't exactly turn the battle in her favor, but the game was a lot closer now than it was before, with Lucario now at 85%. Lucina was jumping up towards him, attempting to continue her combo by somersaults that slashed her Falchion in wide arcs. Lucario responded with aerial stomps, halting his fall and clanking with Lucina's attack as both tried to damage the other. The aerial stalemate allowed Lucario to float away safely and land on the left platform, while Lucina fell down on the topmost one. Refusing to let Lucario catch his breath even for a second, Lucina quickly dropped down and fell towards Lucario with her back facing him.

"Hut!" Lucina slashed backwards in an upwards swipe, but Lucario was able to put up his own shield of blue just as the sword was about to sweep through him. While Lucina fruitlessly attacked his shield with a forward tilt, Lucario took a quick second to calculate his options of playing offensively or defensively, now that their percent damages were more or less equal. Playing defensively would allow him to tack on more damage at a safer rate, but dealing hits and taking them at the same time would allow him to rack up higher percents while simultaneously building up his Aura and Rage so that his hits had a stronger chance of delivering the finishing blow. The answer, he decided, was an obvious one: With his current high damage level allowing him to abuse the scaling power of his Aura, it was time to switch over to aggressive mode. His mind made up, Lucario was just about to roll away, putting himself behind her so that he could more carefully gauge his next attack as Lucina would careen past him while trying to put further pressure on his shield…

…Except that his shield had shattered even before he could execute his roll. Too engrossed in deciding his strategy for that single second, Lucario had failed to notice that Lucina had suddenly hoisted the Falchion perpendicular to her body above her head, and though she did not charge her Shield Breaker for long, the amount of damage her previous attacks had dealt on his shield, and the time-based decay of the shield itself, were enough for the sword to puncture straight through the bubble and blast it apart. With a jarring _clang_! and a yelp of surprise, Lucario's body was lifted up into the air by the sheer impact of the shield breaking alone, and before he knew it the entire world was blurring into messy streaks of colors and undefined shapes, save for the stars that swam around in his head. There was little he could do except let out small moans of pain, for the dizziness upset not only visual perceptions and balance but also halted every intricate workings of the mind, so that for the few seconds after one's shield was broken, one was, effectively, a vegetable in every metaphorical sense of the word. Lucina smirked as she watched Lucario teeter about on his feet. Pushing Lucario to the leftmost edge of the platform, she began to charge up her forward smash, pumping as much of her energy into her arm as possible, until –

"Hyyaaah!" With a triumphant shout Lucina slashed Falchion down all the way down from her head and struck Lucario with a massive blow. Lucario was blasted away, flying like a missile off the stage as if Lucina had rammed into him with a monster truck. The smash had brought Lucario back to his senses, but it was too late then: He was already hurtling towards the blast lines, and did not even have the time to throw out an aerial to directionally influence his trajectory. He felt his body slip through the invisible forcefield that marked the boundaries of the stage, and then he was floating around in nothingness, with only a brief burst of white-blue light exploding the point at which he penetrated through the blast lines to signify the end of his stock.

With just one pivotal second and a few decisive slashes of her sword, Lucina had brought the practice match to an end. There was a slight zap of a beam that fell from the heavens, and in an instant she had disappeared from the Battlefield.

Robin smiled in vicarious victory as he jumped off his seat. The screen turned to black while two of the eight teleporters directly beneath it began to glow with hot light, one red, the other blue. Silhouettes flashed briefly on both of them before the light was sucked back into its metallic base, revealing a beaming Lucina and a slightly woozy Lucario.

"You did well, Lucina," Robin commended, congratulating her with a slight nod of his head. "As did you, Lucario."

"You did not think for one second that I would lose, did you?" Lucina smirked playfully as she turned to Lucario. "Thank you once again for your valuable time, Lucario. I feared that my relative inexperience in _Smash_ combat might have made our match a bit on the dull side for a seasoned fighter such as yourself, but I trust that whatever doubts you had have been squashed by my victory in this battle."

'Robin is right, you do fight well,' Lucario replied as he rubbed his eyes with his paws in an effort to muster his fullest thoughts. Despite the slight tinges of his pride and vanity, Lucario was not a sore loser, and was perfectly capable of recognizing a handy defeat when the time called for it. 'I completely forgot that you possess one of the deadliest tools to shatter our shields like glass in your arsenal.' He removed his paws from his eyes and glanced at Lucina with a slight smile. 'I guarantee you, though, that you won't catch me making the same mistake again if we have a rematch. How about it? You up for a second round of Smash?'

The question was not answered by Lucina or Robin, but rather by the melodious tune of Gourmet Race blaring from the speakers.

"Hiiii! Dinner is ready, everyone! Fresh Shell Blade chowder to get rid of that winter blues! Come down early if you want it piping hot!" Kirby's high-pitched voice rang throughout the mansion as the song ended, a daily routine that signaled, like clockwork, the arrival of dinnertime. "Special thanks to Lucario for getting the Shell Blades delivered on time! If you ever feel like having extras, just come to me with your bowl after you're done!" There was a brief pause, and then, in an even more high-pitched shrill: "No thanks to _you_ , you baka poYoshi! Don't even think about coming to me for extras!"

"Perhaps next time," Lucina spoke over the reverse of Gourmet Race that played to signify the end of the announcement. "At present, however, I think we could all use a little food to reward ourselves for a battle well fought."

'Fair enough,' Lucario replied as the trio of Smashers began to make their way out of the Tournament Hall. 'You never did tell me – exactly who are you fighting this Saturday? I won't pretend that I know everything about each and every Smasher, but I can at the very least provide one or two key words of advice, knowledge which I have amassed over the seven years since my induction in Brawl.'

"Is this the quickest way to the Dining Hall?" Robin asked aloud before Lucina could reply, pointing to a pair of Grind Rails that led past the walls of the Smash Mansion into the ourdoors. "Forgive me, but I am afraid that my knowledge of the transport around the Smash Mansion remains slightly lacking, given the short time that I have resided within its walls."

'Yes, it is,' Lucario affirmed before turning to Lucina. 'You were saying…?'

"You are very kind, and I certainly would treasure any valuable advice you have to give with regards to the Smasher Yoshi. I understand, however, that his unique style of combat may leave you short in –"

'Yoshi is a mix of a close-combat fighter and a mid-range zoner,' Lucario interrupted immediately with animated and barely suppressed vehemence, much to Lucina's surprise. 'You will often find that he switches between aggressive and defensive play on the fly, depending on the situation that he is faced with. Up close, his favorite weapon of choice is his tail. Do not be fooled by its deceptively short length, for it can extend considerably beyond his rear to lash out with great strength and high damage. From afar, Yoshi will pelt you with his eggs, whose trajectories he has moderately good control over. He will often use it as a tool to stun his opponent and land a hit, or else to extend a combo. Do note that Yoshi has the best aerial mobility out of us all, and will therefore stay in the air more often than he is on the ground in order to weave in and out of your personal space with his jumps and Egg Throw –'

Even as they slid against the Grind Rails, even as the cold wind of winter buffeted their precarious bodies, Lucario continued drill the swordswoman with an unending stream of tips and strategies. Lucina struggled to keep up with the pace of the information before ultimately deciding to zone out. The first few pointers, she decided, were sufficient enough. After all, she wouldn't want to have the benefit of knowing too much of her opponent's tricks, lest any ensuing victory feel dishonorable and not completely of her own accord and accomplishment.

* * *

Also zoning out was a certain green dinosaur who was supposed to be renouncing his atheism and laying his soul bare for Lady Palutena to baptize and deem worthy of her Light. Pit prayed and prayed and prayed, but Yoshi didn't listen to a single word as he rested on the large circular rug that adorned the center of Pit's room, weaved out of the finest feathers of consenting angels. The angel was kneeling down on his knees and was blabbering on and on about a special "induction ceremony" that apparently welcomed Yoshi into the family of Angels led by the matriarch her Ladyship Palutena, while Yoshi lied down comfortably on the soft, silky rug on his belly. The angel had had his eyes closed for the entire duration of the prayer and therefore could not see that Yoshi had failed to adopt the correct position from the start, much less notice that he had zero interest whatsoever in becoming a Palutenian.

It was in the trapped confines of Pit's room, lying on a material cozy enough to die in and allowing the monotonous words of faith to wash over him, where Yoshi was struck with yet another epiphany as to what he should do with the apple. With Palutena set to return only after five days, Yoshi needed to find a place where he could store the egg away and at the same time have the fullest peace of mind knowing that absolutely nothing would befall the egg. His carelessness and often bumbling nature, as well as the fact he simply did not want anything to do with it for the remainder of the wait, would mean that he could not keep the egg in his own room. Yet there was no denying that one's own room was as private as one could get in the Smash Mansion, for every other corner that could be tread was a common resource shared by all Smashers. Which room, then, could offer as much privacy to Yoshi as his own, and at the same time provide an environment that was not eroded by the movements of constant change?

An empty room, that was what. A room deserted by its usual inhabitant due to external matters that required the Smasher to be away from the mansion. Palutena's room, was, of course, devoid of its holy resident, but Yoshi had no means of infiltrating hers – and something told him that Pit wouldn't be too eager to lend a helping hand, either. But there was someone else, someone else who had just taken leave a week ago and was not likely to come back for another week…

Luigi was away, visiting Professor E. Gadd to aid the elderly scientist in his ongoing research of ghosts somewhere in the distant lands of the Mushroom Kingdom. Including traveling time, ghost-sucking time, and buddy-buddy time with E. Gadd, Luigi had estimated and informed Yoshi he would be absent from the mansion for about two weeks, if not longer. Never did Yoshi think such passing remarks could be of such usefulness. Luigi would be gone for at least seven days from now; Palutena would return in five. Both rooms would provide an environment of absolute stillness and sterility unmatched by any other. And while the latter was perfectly locked of his intrusive presence, Yoshi knew the code to Luigi's room, knew exactly the four numbers that would grant him access to the perfect hiding place for this span of five days…

He had won. The game was over. Ggwp, apple. The circumstances were all but in his favor, his strategy to win was impeccably flawless, the stamp of victory was stalled by time and time only. After dinner, he would sneak into Luigi's room and leave immediately once the apple was safely locked away. From there he would only have to play the waiting game until Palutena arrived, and then he'd take her aside, tell her that he seriously needed her help, reveal to her the forces of evil that he had unwillingly escorted to the Smash Mansion. He only hoped that she wouldn't make him lick her feet, or else he might seriously scrap the entire thing and just let the demon within have its own merry way.

Thus, with the greatest peace of mind that no religion could ever instill in him, Yoshi decided to spend the remainder of the evening in rest and relaxation, refusing to let the worrisome thoughts bog him down any longer. 'This isn't half bad,' he thought lazily as he gazed at one of the several posters hanging on the angel's walls. The one he was looking at featured Palutena in all her light and glory, staff held erect and mighty in her right hand and celestial wings of blue diverging from her back. On each of the posters were some yellow religious texts, words that Yoshi really couldn't be bothered to read, save for what was easily his favorite of the bunch. Hanging on the left wall was a stern-looking Palutena, bending forward slightly and speaking in a speech bubble text, "You can't hold hands with me if you mastur –"

"And now, Lady Palutena, I pass my prayer over to Yoshi, who has finally seen the beauty of your Light and has decided to accept you as his Goddess and Savior. Yoshi, if you could please just say a few words to Lady Palutena?"

"Huh?" Confused at the sudden address of his name, Yoshi immediately got up onto his knees and clasped his hands together in a fist. Just in time too, because Pit opened one eye and glared at Yoshi as he hissed, "You know – a few words of thanks, tell her why you want to be a Palutenian, that kind of stuff!"

"Oh. Well." Yoshi shifted his knees and rubbed the back of his head. What could he say, what should he say? He rolled the words around in his mind before discarding all of them, deciding that they were either too disgustingly saccharine or flat out untrue. Why should he have to sugarcoat his words for Palutena? Didn't he just promise to himself to have fun for the rest of the evening? An evil grin flitted across Yoshi's cheeks before he cleared his throat in an effort to kill a burgeoning laugh.

"Dear Palutena. Pit says you are gay. Amen."

"I did not!" Pit cried hotly, smacking Yoshi across the chest as the dinosaur exploded in laughter. Then, crushing his hands back together in a fist, he babbled, in an almost incoherent string of words, "I did not say that, Lady Palutena! Yoshi – Yoshi said that! But Yoshi doesn't mean it, does he?" Pit smacked Yoshi's shoulder and signaled, with his eyes, to kneel down and get serious. "You don't mean it, _do you, Yoshi_?!"

Before Yoshi could reply, the melodious tune of Gourmet Race blared from the speakers out in the hall, and Yoshi whooped in delight as he sprang up onto his feet.

"Dinnertime! What a pity. And I was just starting to have fun too!" Yoshi stretched with his arms raised high, cracking his spine with a barrage of pops that partially drowned out Kirby's announcement. "Come on Pit, today's dinner is clam chowder, which I worked super hard to get! That pink puffball better give me extra for using my _own_ money to buy those Shell Blades. It's the least he could do –"

"No thanks to _you_ , you baka poYoshi! Don't even think about coming to me for extras!"

"What an ungrateful little shit," Yoshi sighed as the reverse of Gourmet Race played to signify the end of the announcement. "Well? You coming?"

"You can't leave _now_ ," Pit replied stubbornly, jaw set and arms crossed around his chest as he glared at Yoshi. "You haven't finished your prayers yet!"

"Oh my god, Pit. You don't get it, do you? I wasn't being serious when I said I –"

"Actually, Yoshi, now that you're a Palutenian, you really shouldn't be saying 'oh my god' anymore. I mean, you obviously shouldn't blaspheme at all, but if you _must_ blaspheme, then you should really be saying 'oh my Palutena.'" Upon saying those three words, Pit's hands jumped to his mouth in horror. "Oh my Palutena! I said 'oh my Palutena!' _Oh my Palutena_! I said it again… And again…"

"That…" Yoshi was about to say that was the stupidest thing he ever heard and didn't even make a lick of sense, but upon thinking about it, it actually sort of did make sense. Fuck, why did it matter anyway? Now Pit was on his knees again and brandishing his interlocked fists at the heaven, begging, "Please forgive me Lady Palutena! _Please forgive me Lady Palutena_! It won't happen ever again!"

"Oh for the love of Pa – _god_! Son of a – now you got me saying it too!" Yoshi cursed as he opened the door. "Come on, Pit, let's go get dinner! Palutena's already forgiven you by now –"

" _I am unworthy_!"

"Fuck it." Yoshi strode out of Pit's room and slammed the door behind him. Though his belly was groaning again, it wasn't quite loud enough to drown out Pit's incessant cries forgiveness even at the end of the corridor.


	8. The Dung Beatles

You would think that such a formal establishment as the Smash Mansion would boast the highest order of, well, just that: _Order_ , a homely peace of the most sublime quality to ensure the ease of the residing Smashers, a form of constructive organization that must surely be the necessary foundations to bear the colossal weight of the Smashers, both metrically and metaphorically. Then you slap yourself across the face because you remember that this is the _Smash_ Mansion you're talking about. Super Smash Brothers – those three words alone are incompatible with any notion or concept of order, words that viciously conjure images of chaos after unending chaos, of maniac melees and brutal brawls.

Yes, the Smash Mansion was designed with elegance of appearance; yes, the Smash Mansion was engineered with convenience of infrastructure. Neither the mansion nor its inhabitants, however, were so blessed as to enjoy the tranquility of manufactured stability. In order to understand, look at the metal door that opens up to the inside when a Smasher skids past a detector a certain way along the Grind Rails. Now that doesn't seem so bad, does it? An automatic door that stays shut when not in use and opens only to prevent incoming Smashers from turning into mush and arrive at their destination in a quick and safe fashion. But know this: the entire system lacks one key component, and that is an equally automatic sign that warns anyone who just so happens to walk past to steer clear of the door when a Smasher is just about to burst through. What is perhaps even more outrageous is that this integral machine was purposely scrapped and deliberately left out upon installation of the Grind Rails and the door. It was as if Master Hand had taken a look at the final product, pointed at the sign with one fat condemning finger, and, channeling the spirit of his crazy brother, shouted, "Naaaaw, that ain't Smash Bros, brah! Get that peaceful piece of shit outta here!"

So you can't really blame Jigglypuff as she trotted carefree to the entrance of the Dining Hall, humming melodious songs of "Ji, gelee-puff~" with each bouncing step, when suddenly her entire world was turned into a rapidly rotating tunnel of destruction as the doors on the wall opened without warning and shot a tumbling Robin right into her body.

"Jiggs!" Jigglypuff let out a guttered shriek as the collision effectively turned both her and Robin into a bowling ball of blurred pink and white. They rolled with alarming velocity into the Dining Hall and smashed into the line of Smashers waiting for their dinner, refusing to stop as they sent Smasher after Smasher flying into the air. BAM! There goes Diddy Kong. BAM! There goes Popo and Nana. BAM! There goes Shulk…

Lucina and Lucario were a little luckier. With no wandering balloon to intercept their flight, the momentum from the thrilling rail ride immediately transferred over to their feet, and they were forced to run forward as inertia refused them a smooth landing. Lucina shot out her arms to protect her body from a collision into the adjacent wall, which, thankfully, was made of wood instead of something unreasonable like concrete. Lucario was quick behind her, squishing her body flat against the wall before both bounced off from the pure impact of action-reaction law.

Throughout it all Lucario was still barraging Lucina with everything about Yoshi and how to beat the living snot out of him.

'…Now, Yoshi's Down Special is the Yoshi Bomb, or Ground Pound, as he likes to call it. It's not the most useful move in his arsenal, due to the simple fact that he takes quite a bit of time to initiate the attack, and then some as he finishes. However, he does tend to throw – oof, sorry – he does throw it out now and then as a situational finisher, especially if you're directly below him while he's in the air, or if you're hiding in your shield and he's poked it long enough. Much like your Shield Breaker, his Ground Pound actually does devastating damage to your shield, so keep that in mind when you're up against him with your shield up. Now, any questions so far?'

"I think I just went from a B to an A," Lucina muttered with teeth clenched in pain.

'Excuse me?' Lucario asked, genuinely confused.

"Never – never mind," Lucina groaned as she picked herself up from the floor. Together they made their way to the entrance of the Dining Hall. The lintel of the large doorway was flanked by a picture of an open Party Ball painted directly on the wall, and the sides of the doorway were further decorated with all the food that the Smashers could eat to cut their damage during fights – rice rolls, pancakes, cups of coffee – as if the food was raining down from the Party Ball.

'Did you get everything I told you so far? You should really write it down. Try and borrow a pen and paper from Kirby… He's bound to keep at least one in the Kitchen.'

"Thank you, but I understand perfectly everything you have told me," Lucina replied, still wincing in pain as they took advantage of the mayhem and destruction Robin had caused for them to skip all the way to the front of the line. Diddy Kong was still trying to untangle his tail from the chandelier; Olimar was wrestling his way out of King Dedede's mouth; Captain Falcon was dive-kicking Pikachu, somehow thinking that the electric rat was responsible for blasting him from the line he had waited an unbearable five minutes in. Neither of the two so much as blinked an eye as they collected their tray of food from Kirby. The incident, in fact, wasn't even that remarkable compared to many others that Lucina had witnessed in her relative short time in the mansion.

"I do hope Robin is alright," Lucina commented with passing concern as she looked at the round hole in the wall, which the Jiggly-Robin ball had crashed through to continue their destructive rolling in the snow.

'He'll be fine. He's been through much worse.' Lucario cleared his throat, and then proceeded to say, 'So, now that you know all about Yoshi's general playstyle and his Special attacks, what would you like to hear about next? Standard attacks? Customs, perhaps?'

"You have told me more than I deserve to know, Lucario," Lucina asserted clearly, ensuring that Lucario got the message. "Any more and I will begin to feel much too advantaged in this match, which, I think, will be both dishonorable of me and unfair to Yoshi."

'Ah. Well then.' Lucario cleared his throat again, attempting to diffuse some of the awkwardness that materialized with the forced deletion of the words he had next wanted to say. 'Understood. Then – well, I suppose I'll leave you to enjoy your dinner with your usual –' Lucario nodded in the direction of Marth and Ike, both of whom had procured a table for themselves and were waving to Lucina to come over. Another second of uncomfortable silence. Then, 'Goodbye for now.'

"Farewell – and thank –" The words died in her throat as Lucina watched Lucario turn, struggling with an inner conflict of kindness and selfish want of convenient comfort. She only took a second, however, before the stronger side of her won over the other, and before Lucario could even take a step, she blurted, "Lucario!"

The Aura Pokémon turned back around, surprised. 'Yes?'

"How would you like to sit with us for dinner tonight?"

* * *

Cliques were something of a complicated affair among the Smashers. The most obvious groupings, were, of course, by common Universe of origin, with the exclusion of villains for the sake of avoiding volatile relationships – so the _Mario_ characters were one big group; Kirby, King Dedede, and Meta Knight hung out together frequently; Fox and Falco were seen more often with each other than not. However, as to be expected from living in the same household for an extended period of time, beautiful diversities of unique friendships blossomed periodically throughout Smash history, some somewhat predictable, others completely unexpected. Peach and Zelda surprised no one with their constant sisterly love for each other as they fussed about the issues of royalty and proper conduct among ladies, but who could ever guess that Olimar and Bowser hit it off so well with their common love for tap dancing?

Who, indeed?

Some Smashers were far more popular than others. Yoshi was generally likable enough to feel at ease with almost any group of Smashers and not bear the burden of feeling unwanted and unwelcome. He had his entire crew of _Mario_ characters, talked often enough with Kirby, King Dedede, and Pac-man about the merits of certain food, enjoyed the squealing appraisal of most of the lady Smashers who found him unbearably adorable, and was a regular member of what was considered the most meddlesome, most infuriating quartet of kids to ever curse the Smash Mansion with their very presence: Ness, Lucas, Toon Link, and, of course, himself. Under Ness's leadership, they called themselves The Dung Beatles, though many of the other Smashers who had incurred their wrath had a few other choice words for them. The Shit Beatles, Bowser would call them. Or The Fantastic Fuckfaces, according to Ganondorf.

While Yoshi remained high in the tier list of popularity, Lucario was easily a low tier character. Such was his social standing that he often sat alone to eat his dinner, and was almost never invited to any gatherings or excursions that might be happening. There was nothing immediately wrong with his personality that one could identify upon first glance: he wasn't unpleasant like Wario, wasn't twisted like Ganondorf, wasn't too anxiously shy like Luigi. The problem became more apparent when one tried to hold a decent conversation with Lucario: The Pokémon, simply put, did not have much of a sense of humor. He never loosened up his calculated, business-like tone of speaking, which gave the impression that he always had an underlying motive to every ounce of word he spoke. Those who knew him well enough to understand that no ulterior intention was present failed to incite any whimsy into the canine. Jokes flew over his head, humorous conversations were stagnated by serious replies, and general playfulness was met with disapproving resistance. The only time, in fact, when he ever let himself have some fun was when he was playing video games, which wasn't saying much, considering everyone in the Smash Mansion played games as a requirement. Eventually it got to the point when Lucario distanced himself from everyone and avoided most social interaction altogether. He was a misfit, an outcast, a lone Mightyena that was a victim of its own innate flaws and disabilities. It was a lonely sight that plagued the Dining Hall every evening, and eating his dinner in solitude was a daily ritual that Lucario had fast become accustomed to.

And thus Lucario looked at Lucina in surprise. She stared back, attempting to put on what she hoped was an expression of utmost sincerity and invitation. Well, why not? The Pokémon looked so lonesome that, no matter what the others told her about it being his own personal preference, she couldn't help but feel sorry for him every time she gazed at the solitary figure of one. It could not hurt to invite him to eat dinner with her, just this once. The worst that could happen was either a polite refusal, or an awkward experience that would only last for the meal, both of which were inconsequential.

Lucario's deliberation lasted only for a second.

'I'd love to.'

It does get lonely, doesn't it?

* * *

"A new face approaches," Ike said as he lowered his spoon into his half-finished bowl of chowder, nodding with his head towards where the duo of swordsmen had just seen Lucina.

Marth turned to where Ike was pointing. Lucina was approaching briskly, tray of food in hand, while Lucario lagged behind her slightly, wearing an expression of mingled pleasure and the slightest discomfort on his face.

"Good evening, my lords," Lucina greeted, bowing her head in respect as she did. "Tonight I bring with me a very special guest to our table, a Smasher, I am sure, who requires no introduction."

'Hello, Marth. Hello, Ike.' Not burdened with the requited duty of honoring ancestor or legend, Lucario did not quite express the same level of respect as Lucina. 'I hope you don't mind if I join you all for dinner tonight…?'

"No, not at all!" Marth said with great gusto as he moved closer to Ike to give ample seating space for Lucina and Lucario. The Dining Hall used round tables for the Smashers to eat on, a design that promoted impartial interactions. Marth and Ike hid their surprise at this unexpected guest well, though the latter did shoot Lucina a questioning glance when he saw that the Pokémon wasn't looking. The break in customary sittings was already causing heads to turn and eyes to stare and mouths to open. Lucario, sitting with the Fire Emblem cast! Lucario, sitting with company for the first time in years! This was almost as exciting and outrageous as that one time everyone thought that Little Mac had a gay-bestiality-crush thing for Donkey Kong, before someone realized that it was all only a particularly nasty fetishist's pairing in an even nastier fanfiction! (the title, if Little Mac traumatically recalls correctly, is "The Little Mac Eats Donkey Kong's Big Banana (NSFW)").

"Hey, look what's happening over there," Ness said, pointing to the table where the strange phenomena was occurring and cutting across the story that Yoshi had been keenly telling to his fellow Dung Beatles.

"Huh?" Yoshi looked behind to where Ness was pointing, slightly disappointed that he couldn't finish what he was saying. He had been recounting how he and Lucas had managed to steal a single Bell off of Villager earlier in the morning, though given Villager's reaction they might as well have stolen an entire bag of them. The coin had dropped from Villager's pocket, and Yoshi had egged a reluctant Lucas to PK Freeze the money-minded youngster before he could pick it up. They had ran away, with Lucas babbling an unending steam of apologies and Yoshi laughing his tail off as Villager's normally happy-go-lucky face contorted into that of the wildest rage even within the freezing cages of cryokinetic energy. The Bell was now being proudly flaunted in his hand, the single spoil of a arduous but victorious raid, and was also being completely ignored by everyone as they turned to look at the latest drama happening just a few tables away.

"Well, that's new," Toon Link commented as he threw his spoon into a now-empty bowl with a clang. "Wonder what business Lucario has to sit with the swordies?"

"Getting a little too lonely for his own good, probably." Ness shook his head in feigned sympathy as he withdrew a Mr. Saturn-shaped music player, the iSaturn, which emitted a honky "Boiiiinnngg!" when Ness turned it on. "Well, I suppose it's only a matter of time. Honestly, I'm just surprised it took this long for him to crack." Ness swiped through his playlist a couple of times before setting down the iSaturn and allowing the music to play.

" _Ahhhhh, look at all the lonely people_ ~"

"Fitting, no?" Ness laughed over the melancholic orchestra of strings and voices strained with the pain of loneliness. "What a fucking loser."

"Don't you guys feel even a little bad for Lucario?" Lucas frowned at Ness, expressing his disapproval for this visible lack of empathy. "Put yourself in his shoes. How would you feel if –"

"Lucario doesn't wear shoes," Yoshi interrupted as he swallowed the Bell back into his secondary stomach. He had a feeling it would come in use someday… Perhaps as a way to blackmail Villager…

"It's a metaphor, you idiot. Imagine what it must feel like to see everyone around you having the time of their lives and you're just sitting alone with no one to talk to, no one to listen to your problems, no one to even just be with. I think I'd try my luck at sitting with others once in a while, you know, have a piece of that social pie –"

"Oooh, is it a _blueberry_ social pie?" Yoshi squealed with delight at the mental image of it alone, licking his chops and his nose with his tongue.

"It's a _metaphor_ , you idiot."

"Do metaphors taste like blueberry pie?"

"Well, I'm sorry we can't all be Mr. Compassionate like you," Ness said before Lucas could call Yoshi an idiot for the third time. "Me, personally, I'm not gonna be such a nice guy. I still haven't forgiven him for that one time he took my Gusty Bat and smashed it apart with that bullshit Aura of his. Do you have any idea how long it took me to get that bat? I had to go all the way back to the past and kill a hundred-and-twenty-eight fucking Bionic Krackens just to get another one!"

"Well, to be fair, you were kinda being an annoying little shit," Toon Link replied as he took out his Wind Waker and practiced his conducting in accordance to the music that was playing from the iSaturn.

"How is holding a bat to my dick, stroking it in front of his face, and going "nyahnyahnyah can't touch this" being an annoying little shit?"

"The point is," Lucas spoke loudly as Yoshi rested his chin against the table, daydreaming about one slice of pie, two slices of pie, _three_ slices of pie – "the point is, love him or hate him, Lucario's been alone for far too long now, and we really shouldn't be laughing at him for finally trying to make some friends again. What kind of encouragement is that?" Lucas began playing with his spoon. "I say we invite him to our table the next time he tries to eat with some company. He's going to need all the support he can get to crawl back out of that unhealthy solitude of his – I can vouch on that – and we're in the perfect position to give it to him. How's that sound?"

Atrocious, so atrocious that Yoshi's daydream bubble was popped as he looked at Lucas straight in the eye. "Fuck no, man. Do you have any idea how many times he hit me today when we were on that shopping trip? That Pokémon's got anger issues, and he needs to get them fixed way more than whatever lonely problems he might have."

"I think anyone would hit you, Yoshi, if they weren't used to putting up with your nonsense for five minutes, never mind a whole day," Lucas retorted as he took out a Bag of Pork Chips, which was hands-down his favorite snack.

"I didn't do anything!"

"So you didn't run away to grab a bite when you were supposed to be helping him buy stuff?"

"Well…"

"Or get him into any sort of unnecessary trouble, like pushing him into a hole for absolutely no reason?"

"How did you know?" Yoshi gasped, staring at the blonde-haired psychic as if he was… Psychic.

Lucas shook his head and bit into a pork chip with a satisfying crunch, as if to say "I rest my case." Yoshi kept his mouth shut in defeat as Ness took over his stead to argue against the idea of Lucario being allowed to destroy the intricately beautiful harmony that existed between all four members of The Dung Beatles and all four members of The Dung Beatles only. The dinosaur's eyes were instead drawn to the floor of the Dining Hall, which was home to a vast variety of drawings of food representatives from all the different Universes – Pasta With a Past, Elixer Soup, a giant cake heaped with generous swirls of whipped cream ripped straight from Super Mario 64. Yoshi stared at a pink Poffin that was right next to the table directly opposite theirs, and suddenly felt his head swim with a certain memory from the distant past…

 _"What is that?" he asked, sniffing madly at the deliciously sweet fumes emanating from the pink hot bun in the new Pokémon's paw._

 _'It's called a Poffin,' the strange Pokémon that steamed a funny blue gas replied. Yoshi cared not that the Pokémon's voice rang in his mind, rather than travel the medium of sound to reach his inner ears. All he cared about was that the Pokémon had an entire paper bag of them in the other paw, and the scent was so overwhelming that Yoshi nearly felt like fainting just from the smell alone._

 _Seeing the tortured state the dinosaur was in, Lucario smiled and held out the Poffin. 'Want one?'_

 _ZIP! A grotesquely long tongue shot out from the dinosaur's mouth and grabbed, not the single Poffin, but the entire bag of them. Lucario let out a small yelp of shock as his bag of precious Poffins disappeared before his very eyes into the dark depths of the dinosaur's mouth. He stood, struck dumb by the sheer rudeness of the veteran Smasher, as Yoshi chewed and chewed and chewed. After a large gulp and without a single word of thanks, Yoshi stared at the lone Poffin that was all Lucario had left of his trainer's last parting gift._

 _"Can I have that one, too?"_

Yoshi smiled in memory of their first encounter. That was all the way back in 2008, when Lucario had become an official member of the Smash Bros. crew and was still getting accustomed to the sheer wealth of characters and personalities in the mansion…

…Maybe Lucas was right. Maybe he, Yoshi, _had_ been too…

"Ewww, what is that?" a girly, highly feminine voice asked behind them.

All four members of The Dung Beatles turned and halted their conversation, baton swishing, or deep thoughts of memory. Peach had stopped by their table with a grimace of pure disgust etching the lines along her face as she pointed at Ness's iSaturn.

"It's my iSaturn," Ness replied, looking right back at Peach in a cool and defiant manner. "Got a problem, lady?"

"I was talking about the music, young man," Peach snapped in her ditzy voice. With his iSaturn on shuffle mode, the next song that played was, in stark contrast to the song that Ness had played earlier, dark, gritty, more than a little unsettling to a stereotypically girly-girl's ears. "Is this what young people listen to nowadays?"

"No, young people nowadays listen to utter shit like Gigyas-awful techno and EDM. This is what we call _real_ music," Ness defended passionately as a garbled voice sang:

 _"And you're the apple of my eye  
_ _But with some aid I feel you'll die  
_ _Dr. Rock!"_

Peach shook her head and continued her walk over to the table where Lucario sat with the Fire Emblem characters. Ness stared at the elegant gait of the pink dress, muttering, "I'm surprised Peach doesn't have a nose as large as Luigi's, considering just how fucking nosy she can be."

Toon Link resumed his mock conducting, propelling his arms in a much more frantic fashion to suit the chaotic tempo of the new song. Ness and Lucas continued their argument over the extent to which kindness should be granted to an unfamiliar third party, and Yoshi simply stared intently at the back of Lucario's seated figure.

Wondering: What exactly was he doing over there?

* * *

"– And that's when I jump behind him," Marth told in a voice dripping with gallantry, "and I said to him: 'You may have your Falcon Punch, but that, my friend is, nothing compared to the true strength of my –'" and here Marth unsheathed his sword and struck a dramatic seated pose as if Captain Falcon had suddenly appeared before him on the table – "' _Falchion_ Pawnch! '" Marth said this in his best Captain Falcon imitation of his own little variation of the most famous Smash catchphrase ever, bringing the sword down lightly in a graceful arc to illustrate the true devastating effect his punny attack had on the blue racer.

Lucina burst into a fit of giggles while Ike let out a reluctant smirk at the pure ridiculousness of the Hero-King's latest recount of his last sparring match.

Lucario said nothing, did nothing.

"What do you think of that, Lucario?" Marth asked, smiling at the Pokémon as Peach's hair bobbed behind him.

'Well –' Lucario hesitated, struggling with his words as though Marth had just asked him to answer a difficult question on the theories of Pokébattling. Was it really supposed to be that funny? But what was so funny about a Falchion Punch? All Marth had done was to take the 'Falcon' out and replace it with a 'Falchion'.

'I think it's a very apt finisher to close the stock. I'm impressed,' Lucario replied, in a somewhat weak and completely unconvincing tone.

"Ha! He doesn't mean that at all!" Ike gloated as he lightly punched Marth on the shoulder, though even a light punch from Ike was enough to fire dull aches of pain over Marth's entire shoulder. "Tell me, Lucario," Ike turned to the sole Pokémon of the group now, winking at him slyly in a clandestine effort to recruit him in his side against Marth, "who do you think has a catchphrase better fit for a true warrior? The confident, unforgiving, fear-inducing 'You'll get no sympathy from me', which, as you will be familiar, is my own, or the meek, self-doubting, wholly unremarkable 'Today I have survived', which belongs to Marth? Respectable fighter as he is, he must surely work on sharpening his tongue as much as he sharpens his sword, no?" Ike was leaning forward now, the back of his head to Marth's view as Peach's hair bobbed behind him.

'I –' The questions were getting from bad to worse. Lucario frowned as he watched Ike looked at him expectantly, though for what purpose he did not know. He felt a slight kick to his legs, and, understanding that it could only be Marth, who was directly opposite him, looked to prince of Altea's direction. Marth, too, was behaving strangely, as he mouthed a single word that Lucario could only infer to be 'me' – but me what?

'Ike, do you have something in your eye? You were winking at me. Marth, I don't quite understand why you don't say what you have to say instead of mouthing them at me. What do you mean by uttering the word 'me', anyway?'

Peach's hair bobbed behind Lucario as Marth and Ike took one look at each other before erupting into manly laughter, confusing the Pokémon even more as he turned to Lucina for an explanation. Lucina was just about to reply when she felt movement behind her and decided that enough was enough.

"Peach, may I inquire what exactly are you up to poking around our table and listening to our conversations?" Lucina hurled at the pink princess, not even bothering to keep the discontentment out of her voice as Peach walked past for what must have been the seventh time by now.

"Oh! Well – I was just looking for –" Peach immediately took off her crown and dropped it by Lucina's feet – "My crown! I swear I must have dropped it somewhere near here. Please, don't let me interrupt the lively talk you have going there! I'll just leave once I find my –"

"I think I saw it waaaaay over there," Lucina snarled in reply as she kicked Peach's crown to the other end of the Dining Hall. Peach let out a gasp of "Nooo!" and chased after the skirting headgear of royalty while Lucina turned back to face her fellow eaters. She was already regretting her decision to invite Lucario to her table. It wasn't just because they had become the central object of unwanted attention, or because of the unease of social awkwardness that would surely cause them all to attain Support Level F if there ever was one. She could see, plain as day, that Lucario himself was enjoying none of this, that the sudden joy of inclusion and interactivity was disintegrating into discomfort and an obvious desire to escape, to retreat back into the safety of his solitary shell and forget about the notion of ever trying to belong. Why did she think this was a good idea? Did she think that an isolated invitation would somehow germinate in Lucario an understanding of all the social customs of banter, incite in him an appreciation for the fine art of comedy, verse him in the intricate workings of the humorous? Feeling much too responsible for Lucario's pain, Lucina was just about to suggest a retreat for the night when she felt a sudden chill by her shoulder.

"Robin!" she exclaimed as she looked up to gaze at the tactician. "Oh – oh dear. Are you alright?"

"Nothing a little hearty soup won't cure," Robin shivered as he set his tray down on the table, coldly ignoring the fresh bursts of laughter he was drawing out of Marth and Ike. "Hello, Lucario. Nice to know you've joined us for din –"

Lucario got up, halting Robin in his greeting as he picked up his own tray to return to the counter. 'Take my seat, Robin,' Lucario said briskly. 'I do not wish to deprive you of your usual company, and, given your current state, you're going to need all the warmth you can get, both from your friends and your food. Take the extra bowl of chowder that Kirby has promised me; I'm not feeling very hungry tonight.'

"Huh? But there's plenty of –" Robin interrupted himself with a sharp intake of breath as Lucina stepped on his foot, and Lucario turned to his trio of companions and said, 'Thank you all for granting me the pleasures of your company tonight. I greatly enjoyed the stories you had to tell, and shall no longer do you the disservice of burdening you with my presence any longer.'

"Ah, you don't have to leave!" Marth spoke up in a half-hearted attempt to get him to stay, but Lucario simply smiled in refusal as he turned to go. Throughout his entire walk to the counter to return his tray and then to leave the Dining Hall, the Pokémon had to brook the onslaught of eyes that impaled with inquisitive, almost accusatory glances that seemed to warn him against ever trying something like that again. _Know your place_ , they seemed to whisper, _know your place_. Such words, however, were not spoken by the pair of eyes that belonged to Yoshi, which reflected nothing but pity for the retreating form of a Pokémon scorned by the cruel establishments of society.

* * *

A/N: A huge thanks to The Legendary Falchion for helping me out with the finer details of Marth's and Ike's personalities! Without him you may have read about a duo of swordsmen who have nothing to do with the actual Marth and Ike except in name, so you better be thankful, you ungrateful little brats. Falchion, you will forever be honored by the induction of your name into this Author's Note... That will only last for two weeks, but hey, given how much I hate author's notes in general, this is huge! Plus you'll be here for two weeks instead of the usual one! Double achievement!


	9. Spark

If the Central Wing was where the Smashers smashed and worked and toiled away, and the Eastern Wing was where the Smashers ate and bathed and slept, then the Western Wing was where the Smashers did one thing and one thing only: _Have fun_. As the prime hub for anything and everything to do with entertainment, the Western Wing was absolutely jam-packed with all the necessary facilities and equipment, royally perfect in quality and infinitely diverse in quantity, to endlessly satisfy the pleasure-seeking Smasher and forever stave off the suffocating holds of boredom and monotony. There were three massive home theaters that regularly screened both the classics ( _Mario: The Godfather_ , _Gone With the Wind Waker_ , _12 Angry Smashers_ ) and the more modern flicks ( _R.O.B-E_ , _Sex in Mute City_ , _The Meta Knight Rises_ ); a massive swimming pool that looked over the stunning view of the entire city; machine-run bookstores and cafés that seemed to promise peace and tranquility, but often rained books down on the heads of unsuspecting patrons and spill hot coffee over caffeine-addicted Smashers. There was a sprawling gym packed with the perfect machinery to hone such beautiful bodies as Ike and Wii Fit Trainer; over a hundred different courts, ranging from tennis to soccer to basketball, many of which were regularly hogged by the _Mario_ characters; even a monolithic abyss of a stadium that functioned occasionally as a public venue for concerts featuring the humble, grass-roots shows of the K.K. Slider and the elaborately epic performances of the Elite Beat Agents. Music, sports, arts, you name it; the Western Wing had it all.

With all the right tools and essential capital, the Western Wing was, predictably, a popular destination of choice to kick back and relax in the evening, and it was no exception among all four Dung Beatles tonight – all except one, that is.

"Come _on_ , Yoshi!" Ness pleaded as he grabbed Yoshi by the arm and attempted to pull him towards the Launch Star that would blast them towards the Video Game Room. "You promised to join us for _Mario Party_ tonight! What gives?"

"I have something really important I need to do, OK?" Yoshi pried Ness's hand off of him and smiled back reassuringly. "Listen, just choose the computer to control my character and let him play for a while. I'll join you guys in ten minutes and pick off from where he left off. Sounds good?"

No, it doesn't sound good at all you fucking stupid dinosaur, computers don't get huge nasty blisters on the palms of their hands when they're playing Paddle Battle or Tug o' War, do they. It sounded good enough to Lucas and Toon Link, however, both of whom impatiently seized the adamant youngster and dragged him away to the Launch Star before he could stall any further.

And so Yoshi walked down the corridors of the rooms that housed Smashers whose names begun with L, M, N, O, and P. The hallway was deserted, but Yoshi still shot furtive glances of guilty paranoia behind him, and jumped at every small, insignificant sound – the squeaks of the floorboards, the creaks of the walls. In his left hand he held the large-sized plastic bag from today's shopping trip, which, to any passing observer, seemed to be weighed down by some heavy, round object. Despite the confidence he had displayed earlier, Yoshi's heart punished itself against his ribcage in unease and his stomach tickled itself with fluttering butterflies of mild panic. His pace quickened ever so slightly as he imagined what would happen if someone just happened to come out or round the bend when he was trying to sneak into Luigi's room. _What do you think you're doing?_ they would ask. _What have you got in there?_

He stopped in front of a green door that had a giant white 'L' painted in its center. He looked left, right, and left again, ensuring that the corridor was indeed devoid of any intrusive presence. With a sharp intake of breath, Yoshi punched in Luigi's code on the numbered buttons next to the doorknob as quickly as possible.

On the left of every door of each Room was a small device that scanned the Smasher's ID Card to verify the rightful identity of its inhabitant before granting access. Should, however, the Smasher have left his or her ID Card in the room – or, in Yoshi's case, completely misplace it – there was the second option of keying in a four-number code set by the residing Smasher. It seemed like a reasonably safe method of entry at first – who, after all, could guess the correct combination of four numbers out of the ten thousand possibilities that existed? Of course, it was entirely possible to correctly guess the code and bypass whatever features of promised security that the method was supposed to entail, as Ness and Yoshi discovered one rainy afternoon when a frustrated Luigi confiscated the former's yo-yo after he smacked the back of the green plumber's head one times too many. With an apology out of the question (Ness once famously stated that apologies were for "pissy luckers" – at least, that's what Yoshi thought he said), the psychic prankster enlisted Yoshi's help to break into Luigi's room and retrieve his precious weapon once and for all. Every Smasher was given only five attempts to input the correct code, failure to do which on the sixth try would result in an alarm going off. The duo, however, did not need so many chances, for they managed to crack the code in just one try.

"What series of four numbers would validate Luigi's pathetic existence the most?" Ness had asked.

"Well, that's easy," Yoshi had replied, and immediately bounded over to the numbered buttons to type:

2 0 1 3

"Year of Luigi," Yoshi muttered, and for the second time in his life, he heard a barely-audible _click_ resounding within the mechanism of Luigi's doorknob. He shot one last sweeping glance behind him. Then, open, walk through, ensure the bag doesn't smack against the doorway, close. The dinosaur was gone and the door was closed before a full second had even expired.

Luigi's room was almost exactly as how he remembered when he infiltrated it last. The walls and the ceiling were painted a very light, friendly green, illuminated by a small chandelier of sapphires, emeralds, and rubies – spoils, Yoshi was told once, from Luigi's ghastly hunt for Mario in his haunted adventures. The wardrobe was neatly organized with a variety of clothes and sport equipment, from personalized soccer jerseys to a tennis racket that had a green 'L' stitched in its netting. His bed was ordinary enough – wooden legs, white bedsheet, a silver Luma pillow. The wall next to his bed, however, was anything but. It was covered entirely with papers and papers of varying dimensions and colors, letters and notes that poured in from all over the universes to serenade Luigi with words of adoration and encouragement that poured directly from his (surprisingly) many fans' hearts. _Your brother is sooooo overrated. I like you so much better!_ read some pink-inked words bleeding from a green heart of construction paper. _Just want to tell you that Dark Moon has to be one of the best games of all time. Amazing job. If you ever find yourself in Clock Town within three days of this letter, come visit me. Buy you a milk._ read a faded parchment of a postcard that illustrated some kind of massive archaic clock. And, the last few lines of some formal-looking lined paper: _Every day you continue to give our Timmy the smiles he needs to emerge victorious in his arduous battle against shell cancer. Though you may have not known it, thank you sincerely for breathing new life into this shattered family of Koopas. Best regards, Shelly Koopton._ It was such a beautiful thing, this collage, that not even Ness had the heart to lay a finger on any of the precious paper.

He did, however, have utmost heart in using a permanent marker to scribble on Luigi's desk a microscopic doodle, above which read a taunting 'Yours'. Yoshi didn't exactly know what the doodle was supposed to be and why it was so small, nor did he possess the vocabulary to aptly describe it, but if he did indeed know, the word would be _phallic_.

The doodle was no longer there, replaced by some jarring scratch marks on an otherwise immaculate desk. What was still there, however, was exactly what Yoshi was looking for – a brilliantly white and fancifully designed treasure chest, adorned with golden swirls and a single red ruby, a trove of what was supposed to be some of Luigi's most precious things. Kneeling down, he pulled the chest from underneath Luigi's desk and began taking out its content – the Gameboy Horror, a pin that illustrated Luigi poking his head out from a circular hole, a crisp brown envelope sealed with a golden Official Nintendo Seal of Quality which, Yoshi was sure, contained a congratulatory letter that commemorated the Year of Luigi…

Once everything was strewn in a mess around the chest, Yoshi turned to the shopping bag. With careful precision and delicate hands, Yoshi, slowly, ever so slowly, lowered it into the chest and wrapped the empty parts of the plastic around the body of the egg, in an attempt to provide some cushioning. As an afterthought he took a random assortment of soft-enough objects – an extra pair of gloves, a Bag of Pork Chips, a tourist shirt that promoted some town in the _Animal Crossing_ universe, a fan-made scarf that featured a triumphant Luigi beating his older brother to a pulp – and threw it over the egg, further concealing its pernicious form. Yoshi stood up and stared at his handiwork. An absolute mess of a chest, overflowing with things that shared no common value and surrounded by miscellaneous other objects of equal randomness. He nodded his head in satisfaction, and turned to leave, grabbing a bag of dried fruits as he did. "Sorry about the mess, Mama Luigi," Yoshi smiled to himself as he opened the door wide, turning his head to cast one final inspection. "I'll be sure to clean up before you get –"

'What in Arceus's hell do you think you're doing?'

"YOSHI!" The green dinosaur leaped up so much that his head slammed against the ceiling, such was the extent of the shock of Lucario's sudden appearance – which shouldn't have been that surprising, given the fact that his room was diagonally opposite Luigi's. The bag of dried fruits dropped from his hand as Yoshi attempted to slam the door behind him. "Lu – Lucario!" he stuttered in reply to the Pokémon, who, not for the first time, glared at him with eyes that made anyone thankful that looks couldn't kill. "I – I – Well, the thing is, I –"

Lucario narrowed his eyes at the faltering dinosaur and was just about to blast the dinosaur with a series of accusatory questions when a voice suddenly echoed in his mind: " _Relax! Yoshi, he is a-just trying to have some fun!_ "

Lucario raised up a paw to halt Yoshi's incoherent babbling. 'Do I want to know?' the Pokémon asked simply.

Yoshi ceased the stream of half-baked excuses he was about to spew and gulped. "N-no, I really don't think you do, actually," Yoshi stammered, attempting to wince a smile as if what Lucario had witnessed was a big fat joke instead of a painfully suspicious trespassing. His heart seemed ready to burst forth from his chest as the second it took for Lucario to react crawled to an excruciating minute. Please, don't go into the room. Please don't go into the room. Please don't –

'Then don't tell me.' Lucario sighed and began to march past Yoshi. Time returned to its normal state of flow and relief flooded every cell of his nerves, brutally pricking his skin as if thousands of Shiek's needles were poking into his entire body. Everything is gonna be alright, everything is gonna be OK. Before the dinosaur could sigh out the pent-up relief that threatened to blow up his lungs, however, Lucario whipped right back around and shot him a warning look.

'One word from Luigi about something missing from his room, Yoshi, and he will hear about this. Do not expect a second chance of mercy from me, for I will not tolerate such despicable acts as theft.'

"I didn't steal anything!" Yoshi laughed nervously, trying to stifle whatever guilt that might creep into his voice. "Honestly – all I did – if you really want to know – uh, Ness's yo-yo –"

Yoshi's voice trailed off as the Pokémon ignored him completely and walked on down the hall. He remained silent, just for a second, held back by a momentary uncertainty that rooted itself in an uncomfortable break from character, the lack of confidence in successfully bridging a gaping slash of a rift he himself had partially carved. But the split second of hesitation passed, and Yoshi, remembering the raw waves of pity that had taken hold of his entire emotional state during dinner, called out:

"Hey, Lucy! Lucy!"

Lucario turned around again. 'What do you want now?'

"I –" Yoshi paused briefly as he walked hurriedly next to Lucario. "I – I kind of wanted to say – Well, that I'm sorry. About what I did today. Running away and pushing you down the hole and all that. I… Yeah. I'm sorry."

To say that Lucario was surprised would be the understatement of the year. The Pokémon completely abandoned the dignified image he had always worked hard to display and maintain flawlessly and instead stared dumbly at Yoshi with his jaws stretched open for three whole seconds. Then, remembering himself and remembering who he was talking to, Lucario straightened himself up, shut his mouth, and said, in a tone that attempted to recover as much of his composure as possible, 'Are you… You're not serious, are you? You're just joking around like you usually do, are you?'

"No, 'mon! I really mean it. Like, seriously, honestly, from the bottom of my heart." Yoshi tapped his chest with his finger to show just how bottom of his heart it came from. "I was being an immature asshole and left you to do all the work. It was totally stupid of me and you have every right to be pissed off." He smiled again, a lot more sincerely this time, as he and Lucario continued their walk to the elevators that would take them to their respective destinations. "Why don't I make it up to you? Next time we go shopping, I'll go and buy everything, and you can just sit back and relax for the day! How's that sound?"

'Well…' For what seemed like the thousandth time that day, Lucario was beginning to feel uncomfortable again. Whatever happened to the infuriating, bratty Yoshi who could never fail in annoying him until his Aura turned red? 'Well, I don't think you'll see me around much, anymore. I quit.'

Yoshi let out a dramatic gasp, a social cue that was supposed to emphasize the registered shock of the news, but whose insinuated exaggeration was completely lost on Lucario. "What! Why? It's not – it's not because of me, is it?"

'No, no. Just – I think I'm a little too busy to continue to commit myself to such periodic services. Nothing to do with you at all.' Lucario returned the smile that Yoshi had flashed him earlier, though it was only a slight stretch of the flaps of his muzzle compared to Yoshi's cheek-splitting fissure. 'You shouldn't think so highly of yourself, Yoshi. You didn't really think that you alone would be reason enough for me to quit, did you?'

"I guess not." Yoshi breathed an internal sigh of relief. Any other time he would be high-fiving the other three Dung Beatles, bragging that it was he who drove Lucario up the wall so much that the Pokémon was forced to quit simply because he was his partner… But the Dung Beatles weren't here, an internal switch of some sort had been flicked, and now the only solace he took in was the exact opposite: the fact that he, Yoshi, not the sole factor responsible for Lucario suddenly quitting. "Well, if you'd like, maybe I can buy you some Poffins? Free, to make up for what I did!"

'That – well, why I do appreciate the gesture, you really don't have to –'

"Aw, come on, Lucy, I'm doing this because I want to. You like the pink ones the best, right?"

'Yes, I do, but like I said –'

"Pink it is, then," Yoshi concluded happily as he punched the 'Down' button on the elevator. "You sure you're too busy to join back as my partner? I mean, it's really only about an hour or two of your time every Tuesday."

'I'll have to see about it,' Lucario replied, still a bit miffed by this sudden turn of events as he and Yoshi stepped into the elevator… But this, this didn't feel half as awkward as it did when he was sitting with the Fire Emblem Smashers. The cursory discomfort that came with any social interaction was there, but, for what seemed like the first time – maybe a true first time, in fact – Lucario felt something else dilute the awkwardness, a feeling that was somewhat… Somewhat…

Somewhat pleasant.

Perhaps it was because he had only an entity of one to deal with, or perhaps it was because the dinosaur wasn't forcing him to partake in conversations whose subjects he had zero grains of interest in. Whatever the reason, the fact remained that he had managed to draw an inexplicable enjoyment, no matter how small or fleeting, from the few words that he and Yoshi had exchanged – a monolithically magnanimous feat, given Lucario's general distaste towards all things that involved banter.

"Where are you going?" Yoshi asked, as the elevator stopped at the sixth floor, where the Residential Area began.

'Charizard's asked to see me for a few minutes. Just wants some general advice on how she should fight Samus, who she's going against this coming tournament.' Lucario stepped out and turned to face Yoshi. 'Well… Goodnight, then, Yoshi.'

"Yeah! Goodnight!" Yoshi waved cheerfully even as the doors began to close. "Once again, super sorry about what happened today! If you want, you can come join me after you're done – I'll be playing _Mario Party_ with –"

The door closed and Yoshi's voice was immediately cut off. Rather than make his way towards Charizard's room, however, Lucario stayed rooted to the spot for what might have been a full ten seconds, staring at the closed metal doors that, quite recently, exuded, for the first time in his entire stay in the Smash Mansion, a welcoming, warm comfort in the presence of some other.

A reluctant smile found itself on the normally stoic face of the Aura Pokémon, and with a slight shake of his head to revert to his original state of impartiality, Lucario finally broke his trance from the elevator and walked, with what seemed like a slight whimsy in his steps, to where Charizard was waiting for him.

* * *

"Once again, I'm terribly sorry about this, sonny," Professor E. Gadd apologized as he pressed a button on the wall to open the garage door for Luigi. "To think that all the ghosts would evacuate the moment just one of them hears that you'll be coming! Well, I suppose it can't be helped, my boy. You really did make a reputation for yourself in the community of the dearly departed, it seems – and not a favorable one at that!"

"I think I can live the rest of my life without being in their good tomes," Luigi grinned as he turned the ignition of his personalized kart that he most frequently used in his kart racing adventures. "It was nice catching up with you anyway, Professor. You sure you don't need me to stick around? Maybe help you out in your other research? I don't have any matches this Saturday, either, so no rush there."

"Don't be so patronizing to me, sonny. I may be old, but the only time I'll ever need the lean, green, sucking machine is to get rid of some pesky Boos – and when I need some housecleaning! Ho ho!"

Luigi drove forward slowly, stopping right when his seat was next to E. Gadd. "Well, feel free to call whenever else you might need me, Professor. I won't have any new games to work on for a while, and life at the Smash Mansion is slowing down, for once." Luigi checked the brakes of his kart one last time before turning to face the elderly scientist. "I'll see you soon! Thanks for your hospitality, as always."

"Farewell, Luigi! Until our paths cross again!" E. Gadd waved his hand as Luigi drove out to the driveway. The green plumber raised a hand in farewell, just before his kart roared to life and shot into the darkness of the night. The younger brother of Mario zipped through the dark, forested path, humming a soft tune as he thought of nothing but the comfort of his own residence that would await him once he set foot back in the Smash Mansion.


	10. Midnight Snack

11 p.m. A time when almost every Smasher emerges from the various nooks and crannies of the Smash Mansion and retreat into the humble abode of their own rooms. The house is settling, the night is falling. Tranquility comes and knocks on every door, sprinkling pixie magic over those who welcome her with doors wide open, caressing them gently as they fall in the loving embrace of her arms.

* * *

11 p.m. Yoshi lies on his bed, smiling to himself as select screenshots of the day blur his mind with clutter and disorganization. A Villager frozen in a chunk of jagged ice… Soaring wings, the ecstasy of wild winds, a panicking Pokémon hanging by his heels… An out-of-body view of his and Lucario walking down the corridor with nothing but empathy and understanding paving the way… An apple, bulging, throbbing, an object deserving of all malicious scorn as it screams it silent rage, which echoes within the inner walls of its impermeable cages…

* * *

11 p.m. Lucario stands lightly on the grassy floor of his room, eyes closed, arms crossed, Aura blazing, mouth uttering soundless names. A nightly exercise, a silent roll call, to keep his Aura sharp and honed, a test of concentration and mental fortitude as he strains the limits of his energy and subjects the entire grounds of the mansion to the sight of his third, invisible eye. Life is detected, and the owner of said life is identified. He starts with those nearest to him first. Lucas is in his room. Lucina is right outside her door. Little Mac...

* * *

11 p.m. Lucina stands outside her room, having already said her goodnight to Robin. The two had spent a romantic evening on the very top of the Smash Mansion, bundled up in their winter clothes and enjoying steaming mugs of hot chocolate. Standing in front of her room, she checks her pocket, experiences a nasty jolt, and curses.

* * *

11 p.m. Luigi sighs, stretches, pops his elbows and his knees and his back. The drive from E. Gadd's laboratory to the Smash Mansion has gone on for an agonizingly lonely and monotonous five hours. He is stinky and fatigued and wants nothing more than to curl up and grab a good night's sleep… But there is still thirty more minutes to go before he arrives at the gates of the Smash Mansion. Pull through, pull through…

* * *

11 p.m. Lucas lies on his bed, rubbing his stomach as it scolds him with rumbling whines and punishes him with searing burns that jolt him from the fumbling grasps of sleep. You didn't feed me enough, the stomach pouts. You weren't hungry then, Lucas argues. Shut up and feed me, it snarls back, electrocuting Lucas with another poke of its acid-laced torture instrument.

* * *

11:02 p.m. The boy gets up, groaning at his own idiocy for not finishing his dinner. He opens his door and looks out into the corridor. The lights have been extinguished, presenting instead the gaping grottos of the maws of darkness that want nothing more than to swallow him whole and satisfy its own hunger. Arms shaking, legs trembling, Lucas lights an orb of PK Fire in the palm of his hand. A small circle of red carpet and wooden walls and the opposite door, with an infinite cage of black all around, a cage that will eternally haunt him as he trudges through the unknown of its amorphous body, all the way to his personal fridge in the Kitchen on the ground floor. Lucas shivers. Forget it, he squeaks. Forget it, the stomach agrees. He is just about to scramble back into the safety of his bed when he sees something in his peripheral vision.

A door, slightly ajar…

Lucas brings up the ball of fire. Luigi's room is open, the door left unclosed as its sweeping arc is interrupted by some lumpy mass of white and plastic. Lucas frowns, squints, walks a little closer to see what it is.

A bag of dried fruits.

Snacks.

The decision doesn't even take a second. Dried fruits he does not like, but what of other goodies that Luigi might keep in his room? He only needed it for the night – he would surely have enough time to return what he ate before Luigi came back, which was a lengthy week from now, according to what Yoshi had said. Never did Lucas think such passing remarks could be of such usefulness. As for why it was open… Well, Mario probably needed something from his brother… It wouldn't be that surprising for either of them to know the code of the other, after all, considering they were twin brothers…

Kicking the disgusting fruits back into the room, Lucas enters, flicking the switch of Luigi's room on and shutting the door behind him. He walks forward, approaching an absolute mess of a chest, overflowing with things that shared no common value and surrounded by miscellaneous other objects of equal randomness…

* * *

11:06 p.m. Ness lies on his bed, playing _Earthbound Beginnings_ , showing no signs of fatigue that threatens to slacken his grip or loosen his eyelids. The next song on his iSaturn begins to blast from his speakers: A catchy drumbeat, followed quickly by some wild, almost primal yowls, complemented by the exotic _chika chika chika_ of maracas. A snippet of random grunts and laughs, then:

 _"Please allow me to introduce myself; I'm a man of wealth, and taste~"_

* * *

11:10 p.m.

"Everything is gonna be alright," Yoshi breathes as the gentle hands of sleep coax his eyelids to flutter shut, closing his eyes to the reality of the night. "Everything is gonna be OK…"

* * *

 **END OF PART I**


	11. Token Blue

**Part II**

* * *

It was after she had nudged her body into the sharp corner of some furniture for quite possibly the millionth time that Lucina finally confirmed her malicious suspicion that Master Hand was truly the most despicable, most fiendish giant right hand that ever existed. It was all because of his psychotic thoughts and reasoning that she was now bumbling around in complete darkness, constantly tripping over invisible things on the ground or driving a sensitive area of her body into protruding edges of shrouded objects. The mansion, Master Hand had decided, must be plunged into the deepest abyss of the night at eleven p.m. sharp with nary a source of light to pollute even a single square of its "beautiful blackness" (his words). He had done this for the same reason that Robin and Jigglypuff had turned into the ultimate bowling ball of destruction earlier in the evening – to induce some sort of chaotic carnage in an effort to justify the words "Super Smash Bros." that shone in garnet red on the outside walls of the mansion. Even after he semi-retired and left with his brother to Naga-knows-where the mansion remained brooding in darkness, a consequence of his warning that there would be hell to pay if ever on one his random visits he discovered any changes that undermined even the slightest of his chaotic tendencies.

Well, she supposed dully, as she finally pressed the button to the elevator that would take her to her floor after what seemed like hours of smashing into things, well, it was partly her own fault. She had carelessly left her Smash ID Card on the roof of the mansion where she and Robin had spent the entirety of their evening, and her meticulousness and distrust towards those she did not know well had prevented her from waiting till the morrow to collect it. The journey to and back had taken close to half-an-hour, when it would have taken all but ten minutes of her time during any other part of the day.

Still though, even if it was the physical antithesis of all things calm and peaceful, living in the Smash Mansion did have its advantages. Lucina could have accidentally impaled herself on the sharpest sword in the mansion and not a single drop of blood would have spilled from the resulting hole in her body. There wouldn't even be a hole, in fact, for as soon as she pushed the intruding object out of her flesh all that would remain would be the cursory pain and discomfort such things often resulted in. It was law in the Smash Universe that no injury could ever be too serious, that death was all but a fantasy to any of its inhabitants – a refreshing change from the blood-soaked grounds of the battlefields she had grown up in back in Ylisse.

It was hard to appreciate such advantages now, what with multiple areas of her body still aching and her eyes straining to open from the exhaustion of delayed sleep.

In some deep corner of the mansion she thought she might have heard someone yell, barely audible from the distance of its location and the layers of walls that separated them. She shook it off, however, as the elevator shuddered to a stop on her floor. Fools having fun, in all likelihood.

She walked through the silence and the darkness of the hallway, registering just how loud the sound of muffled footsteps on soft carpet was in the absence of all light and life.

She stopped in front of her room, recognizing by touch the carved symbol of the Naga she had on her doorknob. Tired, flushed with sweat, wanting nothing more than to bathe and then sleep, Lucina scanned her card on the reader and pushed open her door.

She lit the lantern by her door…

...And stood absolutely still, frozen by what was illuminated before her.

* * *

Just a few minutes prior and a couple of floors below, Shulk and Sonic walked through the Atrium, dodging furniture with the help of the soft blue light that emanated from Shulk's Monado. The Atrium was very much different during the night than it was in the day. Without any natural light cascading through the high windows, the spacious room was drained of the rich diversity of colors that it boasted, from the posters on the walls down to the plushy chairs. The atmosphere within turned from vibrant, cheerful, welcoming, to dull, gloomy, repulsive, upon the instantaneous murder of light throughout the mansion. The monochromatic wavelength that shimmered from Shulk's Monado only made things worse, forcing all to reflect a repetitive blue sheen as though every object was infected with some sickness.

The two had just returned from a night out in one of the local bars. Shulk, who was not as lightweight as he seemed, had already shaken off the mild tipsiness that had plagued him on the journey back to the mansion. The same could not be said for Sonic, however, who was driving his lanky blue legs completely under the influence, having downed several pints of Gintendo, Drunk Hunt, and Yoshi's Eggnog ('tis the season!).

'Very interesting,' Shulk commented as he gazed intently at the glass centerpiece of his Monado. He swiped his finger through it now and again, scrolling through his Mwiitter page as he read the various posts of the people he followed. Shulk had been glued to the circular "screen" of his Monado ever since the superior technology of the Smash Universe allowed him to master, download, and install the Social Media Monado Art, and at present was cementing the stereotype that today's generation of kids and teenagers are nothing but technology-obsessed _twats_. 'Do you know what a "token character" is?' he asked out loud, reading from one of SuperSmashFact's mwiits in his oh-so-quotable British accent.

"Some loser made out of cheap metal arcade coins?" Sonic huffed as he teetered to and fro, careening his body in exaggerated direction to whichever foot he had to raise up next. The hedgehog was a mess – his spiky blue hair was extremely disheveled and looked as though a tornado had swept through it, the peach fur of his chest was tainted with a slight green from puke, and one of his shoes had somehow slipped off his feet.

'No,' Shulk sighed as he grabbed Sonic's arm and wrung it around his neck, using the other arm to hold the guiding Monado in front of them. 'It's a character who hails from a certain minority group. They're included in books or movies for the sole purpose of attracting people from the same group. Token characters typically have very minor roles, and in horror stories, are even killed off as the first victim. Examples include –'

"The fuck did you just call me?" Sonic raised his voice and wrestled free from Shulk's grip, pushing the blonde Hom away and glaring at him as though he had just insulted his mother.

'Nothing!' Shulk replied hastily, regretting his decision to make small talk with the drunken creature immediately. 'Nothing at all, so come on, get under my arm – we need to get you back to your room –'

"Stupid motherShulker," Sonic spat, both literally and figuratively as globules of spit sprayed forth from his mouth. Without any warning he reeled back his fist and spun it around in a wheel as though he was charging up his Forward Smash. "Calling me a fucking token –" Sonic punched with all his drunken might, but Shulk didn't even have to budge a centimeter: The fist flew nowhere near his face, aimed too far off to the left, and propelled Sonic forward so much that he ended up falling over, his fall broken by one of the couches. "Fucking calling me out –"

'Keep your quills on, you furry git, I wasn't calling you nothing! Come on, get up will you?' Shulk pleaded desperately as he tried to pull Sonic off the sofa. His room, with its fresh change of clothes and deliciously comfortable bed, was only a few floors above him, and Shulk was sorely tempted to leave the hedgehog in the Atrium and return to his room unburdened by the weight of a drunken blue mess of a friend… But no. As someone who set high standards for himself after he had learned the true value of friendship, leaving the blue hedgehog to fend off his drunkenness in the discomforting solitude of the night would be a despicable thing to do.

"DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?!" Sonic roared suddenly, wrestling free from Shulk's grip and shaking dust from the ceiling as the mansion was rudely awoken from its deep, peaceful slumber.

'Shut it, you bleedin' bastard!' Shulk hissed as he pounced back onto the couch and clasped Sonic's mouth with his hand. This, however, turned out to be a big mistake, for Sonic took the action to be an invitation to fight, and immediately began thrashing around, shaking Shulk off and unleashing a barrage of blind punches and kicks into the air in an attempt to land a hit.

"I'M SONIC THE FUCKING HEDGEHOG, YOU LITTLE SHIT –"

'Yeah, I _know_ that –' Shulk began as he threw his Monado to the side, trying to weave his way in through the flurry of savagery to restrain Sonic by hand.

"BIGGER THAN FUCKING MARIO EVER WILL BE –"

'Okay, okay, I believe you, so can you please –'

"JUST BECAUSE _XENOBLADE_ WAS A GOOD FUCKING GAME DOESN'T MEAN YOU CAN FUCKING PATRONIZE ME EVERY GODDAMN SECOND –"

'Well, it wasn't just _good_ , it was _amazing_ , possibly one of the best games of the last generation – but I didn't patronise –'

"IT'S NOT MY FUCKING FAULT _UNLEASHED_ AND _BOOM_ WERE FUCKING SHIT –"

'I know it's not, so will you just –'

" _SONIC BOOM PUNCH, MOTHERFUCKER_!" Sonic screamed, slamming his fist straight into Shulk's mouth.

'Ah fuck,' Shulk said in an almost nonchalant voice as he slid off the couch. 'I can't believe you've done this.' He grasped his mouth with his hands as he abandoned all attempts to put an end to the asinine struggles of drunk Sonic. For a while he sat still, bitterly nursing his mouth and struggling to repress the urge to drive his Monado straight into Sonic's heaving belly. Behind him, he sensed the slowing of movements; Sonic was finally losing steam as the frenzy of his limbs reduced to half-hearted jerks and twitches.

Once enough of the pain and anger had ebbed away, Shulk turned his head. Sonic's head was hanging over the sides of the couch, face buried into its cushiony side as his body shook with muffled sobs and moans. Shulk sighed irritably. Straight from the rage roof all the way down to the depressed dump. 'You are so going to lose your head tomorrow morning,' Shulk muttered as he patted him on the shoulder and made to get up. He had rested long enough, and though his lip was still bleeding, it wasn't throbbing as badly any –

 _Wait, bleeding_?

Shulk touched his lip again and immediately observed his finger. A drop of blood, richly maroon and eerily tinged with blue by the light of his Monado, glistened before him. The palm of his right hand, which had been the one in direct contact with his lower lip, was colored slightly with a faded red, a patch of stained skin, sated from the river that had gashed itself into his lower lip.

Instinctively Shulk grabbed his Monado and scrambled to his feet.

Something was wrong. Something was very, very wrong.

He glanced around him, wielding his Monado as he attempted to see through the thick fog of darkness that was only partially permeated by the weak light of his Monado.

No one. Just the tables and the chairs and the racks of magazines, all lent a shade of blue from the blade he held in his hands.

He heard a dull _thunk_ behind him, and Shulk turned around instantly, crouching his body in a battle stance, heart hammering unbearably hard against the confines of his chest.

Still no one. Just Sonic, who seemed to have fallen asleep: he wasn't even crying anymore, instead lying motionless on the couch, neck and head hanging over the side facing away from Shulk. The Monado boy buried his face in one palm and shook his head. He was imagining things, fearing that which did not exist nor pose any threat to him. Maybe his lip wasn't even bleeding. Maybe he _was_ drunk.

'Sonic,' he said gently, walking towards the fallen body. 'Wake up. Come on, we've got to go back.'

There was no reply. Sonic continued to sleep on, lying lifeless and absolutely devoid of movement. Shulk sighed again and began to shake Sonic's body. 'Come on, you lazy sod, wake up. You can go back to sleep once you're in your room –'

The first thing Shulk noticed immediately was that Sonic's body was significantly lighter than before, much more susceptible to the rocking motions Shulk exerted upon it. In the next second, as he brought Sonic's body up to lift it up the couch, the reason why presented itself to him.

Where Sonic's head should have been was instead the interior cross-section of his gaping neck.

* * *

Lucina struggled to breathe.

Her room was an absolute mess. The shards of her broken window littered her table, the fresh mounds of snow that piled up on the surface kept cool and whole by the outside chill. The meticulous letters that she had been writing to Chrom and Olivia were torn to shreds, the bits scattered around the room as the bottle of ink spewed its contents right beside the leg of her desk. The door of her wardrobe was torn off its hinges, lying flat on the floor as her clothes rested in a disheveled heap on her bed. Her walls were gashed, scarred by long, thick slashes as though someone had used them as practice targets for his swordplay.

Lucina's hand immediately jumped to the side of the door, where she normally kept her Falchion when she did not need it.

Her hand groped nothing but air.

She looked at where her hand was, where her Falchion should be, and felt the burden of dread upon her shoulders grow even heavier.

Her sword was missing.

* * *

Shulk, stunned, gazed down at the stump of Sonic's neck. Several orifices gaped back at him, holes of the esophagus and trachea and veins and arteries that now served no anatomical purpose as they drowned in a sea of red, raw, fleshy muscles. The veins and arteries throbbed, spurting minute fountains of blood, spraying Shulk's increasingly paling face as greater quantities of the liquid spilled from the sides and flowed down the remainder of Sonic's neck.

The petrified trance lasted only a second. Shulk let go, allowing the decapitated body to fall from his arms. It hit the floor with a louder _thunk_ than before, and a small section of the spinal column broke off and rolled underneath the furniture.

Shulk breathed heavily, jumping off and once again adopting his combat stance. He gripped the Monado tightly, splitting open its cleaved beak as he unleashed the full length and light of its ethereal blade. There was no time to be shocked, no time to be impacted by its devastating effects. His war against the Mechons had trained him to be a true warrior, and almost purely by will Shulk was able to stifle the turbulence of emotional wrought that had raged inside him just seconds before. Decapitated bodies, heads rolling around freely… All he had seen, sometimes even within the very colony that he called home. He could not afford to waste even the slightest morsel of his concentration on images his eyes had already long been accustomed to.

'Monado, please – lend me your power!' Shulk whispered.

As though it had heard Shulk's wish, as though it was capable of understanding the desperation behind his words, the Monado fired a surge of energy up Shulk's arms and throughout his entire body, and for the briefest instant Shulk saw – saw himself, standing wide open, as a figure cloaked in black, blacker than the black of night, jumped at him with its point aimed directly at his heart –

He immediately swerved his body rightwards and jumped back while swinging the Monado in front of his chest. There was the clank of blade against blade, and Shulk could see hands of pure darkness wrapped around the hilt of the opposing sword, of a design much longer, sleeker, more slender than his, possessing a teardrop of a hole in its guard.

An oddly familiar design, but Shulk had no time to think as he aimed another slash straight for the hands that were wielding it. The hands moved away just in time, one sliding up the hilt while the other slid down. Shulk's Monado struck the hilt right in the center, and the pure power of his attack forced it out of the attacker's grip. The sword flew off, whizzing away in an almost elegant, rotational motion before it filled the room with the reverberation of its landing.

Shulk slammed a table aside as he advanced forward with the Monado held ready, but his murderous opponent had once again sunk into the darkness.

He inhaled, exhaled, inhaled, exhaled. He was now more or less in the center of the Atrium, his back facing the door from where he and Sonic had entered, the couch near where Sonic's lifeless body rested to his left. It was a bad position to be in, and Shulk immediately retreated as he calculated his options. The attacker, he was sure, was somewhere in front of him at the moment, to the right walls of the room, trying to find his sword, perhaps attempting to sneak around…

Shulk cast a quick glance behind him before facing forward again. His palms were sweating, his arms were shaking, but still Shulk kept a firm grip. The circumstances were all but against him: Desperately alone in the thick shroud of darkness, unaware of the exact identity and weaknesses of his enemy, the maws of death eagerly awaiting his demise…

Silence. Shulk waited, straining to see past the limited area his Monado granted him, prickling his ears in an attempt to hear some form of movement. All his moves, every single one of his calculations, would have to be perfect from now. One mistake, just one mistake, could prove to be fatal. One mistake –

There was a third _thunk_ , this time by Shulk's right foot, and the Hom tore his eyes to look down. Sonic's head looked up back at him, eyes red and wide open, somehow flashing a glimpse of surprise even in its decapitated state, as though its last thought before it died was why on earth was it falling away from the neck that supported it. The snout was gone, replaced by bite marks that had torn away to reveal a gooey mesh of flesh and teeth stained by red.

This was the first of Shulk's two mistakes: To allow even a fraction of his precious attention to be distracted by the enemy's projectile. But the second mistake was the graver of the two, for the attack that followed next could still have been easily avoided had he not committed it. It was a mistake made long before the events of the battle, a mistake made all the way back when Shulk had first joined the Smash Mansion and allowed the tides of technology to sweep him over and become the predominant force leading his life.

It began with a rustle of sudden movement from above. Shulk, having anticipated an aerial attack, activated his Arts and selected the very first one. He jumped back, expecting the accelerated momentum granted to him by his Jump Art to whisk him away and put him in a favorable position to counterattack. But he had quite unfortunately forgotten that it was no longer the first in line, pushed to second by the mastery of his latest art. Panic and perplexity inundated within him, for he was not traversing the air with great speed or reaching lofty heights, both of which he desperately needed to avoid the attack. Then he read the kanji on the center of his Monado, and his jaws dropped open as he realized, too late, the fatal mistake he had made.

ソ.

So.

'Social media…' Shulk said stupidly.

Pictures of the people he followed on Miistagram flashed on his Monado, useless in stopping the descent of the enemy blade as it struck through his flesh and impaled the right of his midriff. Shulk burst his vocal cords wide open as an animal howl of agony escaped from his lungs. A fighter to the very end, he was just about to swing his Monado forward in order to slice off the arms of the attacker, but the next instant the sword was retracted from his body as the murderer pushed away, forcing Shulk down onto the floor. His Monado fell from his weakened grip, clattering besides him as he wheezed, coughed, spat blood. He struggled to get up, one hand gripping the hole in his flesh tightly, trying fruitlessly to staunch the blood spilling like a volcano from the wound. A kick to the head, and he was now sprawled on the floor, the blue light of his Monado blurring as he drowned in the vacuum of his consciousness, flailing to get a hold, to grab the Monado, get a grip of anything, anything, anything that could ground him back in the realm of reality…

He thought he heard loud, garbled voices, voices that did not belong to him, and the last thing he saw before the world was extinguished into permanent darkness was a very humanlike figure skirt away from the fading light of his Monado.


	12. Wet Dreams

"Can you fly?" Lucario asked, body trembling as he struggled to maintain his balance under the colossal weight of the entire TnT Mall that rested upon his shoulders.

"Of course I can!" Yoshi replied happily, as wings sprawled from his back and unfolded themselves with sudden force that blew gusts of wind in all directions. "Come on – let's go on a ride!"

And before he knew it he was whisking away into the air with Lucario hanging onto his legs, the mall mysteriously out of sight as they blasted through the skies at a breakneck speed. Clouds rolled idly by, spraying dancing streams of snow towards them, though Yoshi dodged these expertly with a series of rolls and turns. He unfurled his tongue and snatched away the fruits wedged tightly between the beaks of passing Goonies, inciting their anger as they turned tail and attempted to peck at him in revenge. Then Pit flew by and Yoshi extended his hand towards him, singing, "I want to hold your haa~aaa~aaand! I want to hold your hand!" But Pit recoiled away from him, shouting back, "Lady Palutena said I can't hold her hand if I hold yours!" Then he suddenly turned into Villager, floating up and up with his balloons, and Yoshi breathed a ball of ice that exploded upon impact and completely froze him, and then a Goonie threw an apple into his mouth and he was gorging himself upon its scrumptious form –

"Yoshi!" Lucario was shouting.

Yoshi ignored him as he chewed and chewed. The apple was _delicious_. It turned a sickening shade of ivy green in his mouth and clumped to his teeth, as though made of peanut butter.

"Yoshi!" Lucario cried again, arm extending cartoonishly long as he shook him by the shoulder.

Again Yoshi ignored him, focusing all his attention on chewing through the apple instead. What was wrong with this thing? It refused to break down even as he mixed with saliva and crunched, crunched, crunched. The goop seeped from his mouth and began to crawl up his nose and down his chin, covering his face gradually with its fluid.

"Yoshi!" Lucario cried yet again – only this time, Yoshi realized, it didn't sound quite like the Pokémon. Yoshi looked down and frowned. No longer was it Lucario hanging by his legs, but instead his old friend ever since the Brawl days, Toon Link. He took out his Wind Waker, jabbed him on the nose, and shouted, "Wake up, you idiot!"

Yoshi's eyes fluttered open.

He was back in his room, back on the solid ground of his soft dirt bed. His mouth felt stuffed, as though he really had been eating fruits outside the realm of his dream. He looked down, let out a muffled sigh, and began pulling his woolly blanket out of his mouth.

"And I thought I was hard to wake up," a familiar voice grunted beside him.

Yoshi turned, pulling the last of his blanket out from the depths of his esophagus. Toon Link stood next to his bed, looking as though he had only just barely woken up himself: his blonde hair was a puffed-up mess, his eyes were half-closed in sleep, and he stood dumbly in his blue crayfish pajamas.

"It's four in the fucking morning," Yoshi groaned as he checked the Shyguy-shaped clock hanging on the wall. "The fuck are you doing here?" He was already regretting giving the Dung Beatles the code to his room as an act of sworn loyalty to the group. He threw himself back on the bed, shielding his eyes with the blanket from the light that the Hylian had turned on. The dream was just too good to wake up from… Maybe if he went back to sleep this very instant he could slip back into it again…

"To wake you up, r-r-r-retard," Toon Link yawned, joining Yoshi on his soft arena of dirt and pulling the blanket off of him. "They had one of those emergency alert thingies and we're the only two not down there yet."

Yoshi groaned again, keeping his eyes shut as he wrestled with Toon Link for the blanket. In very rare circumstances that called for immediate action and attention, the Emergency Alarm sounded to summon every Smasher to gather in the Auditorium. It was a loud, blaring signal that took its alarm noise from what typically sounded during the Challenger Approaching screen just before a fight against an unlockable character. Though the piercing loudness of the alarm should have been enough to wake anyone up, Yoshi and Toon Link seemingly had skulls as thick as Thwomps, and were therefore granted immunity from its intrusive awakening properties as they slept on with the deep dreamy apathy of a tranquilized narcoleptic.

"And how did you find out about it?" Yoshi snapped back, pushing Toon Link off his bed and cloaking himself in his semi-wet blanket again.

"They sent Greninja with a note to get us. They're still waiting down –"

The effect was instantaneous. Yoshi zipped back up, throwing off his woolly cover and gawping at Toon Link with eyes wide open and pupils sharply contracted. "Gre – Greninja's here?" he squawked.

Almost as though responding to the call of her name, the ninja frog barged through the door that Toon Link had left ajar. "Ees 'e awake now?" she asked, but of course, as the other two were incapable of understanding the language of Pokémon, all they heard were "Greninja ninja gre?"

Yoshi's jaw dropped open and tongue lolled out all the way to the ground, and Toon Link slapped his forehead. In his own sleepiness he had completely forgotten his reason for going in without Greninja to wake Yoshi up – to warn him that the biggest love interest of his life was about to come in and escort them to the Auditorium, and hopefully help his friend calm down enough so that he didn't make a fool of himself in front of her. Yoshi had confided in the Dung Beatles about his massive crush on the same day that Greninja had walked through the doors of the Smash Mansion, and had asked for general tips on how to score with the ladies and make them swoon. Ness and Toon Link, well-versed in their relationships with Paula and Tetra respectively, had a plethora of things to say – cut back on the swear words, don't try too hard to be funny, buy her a frying pan and ask her to make you a sandwich, bitch ("I'm joking!" Ness retracted hastily as Toon Link smacked him on the back of his head with his Boomerang). Even Lucas had a word or two to chip in, based on his experiences with Kumatora, and sagely noted that what worked for Ness and Toon Link might not necessarily work in attracting a lady Pokémon.

Of course, the advice they gave could have been worth all the gold in the world, and it still would have been absolute trash if the receiver of said advice was completely ineffective in executing it. Every time Yoshi thought he mustered enough courage to finally approach Greninja and ask her out – or, more likely, every time Ness pushed Yoshi in the general direction to which the Pokémon was walking to – the same thing always ended up happening: He would turn into speechless jelly, wobble uncertainly as he remained rooted to the spot, and simply watch her pass by before returning unceremoniously with his tail literally hanging between his legs.

It was hard to believe that a dinosaur fearless enough to drop laxative pills into a sleeping Bowser's mouth and spray paint the Blue Falcon into an acid green color could be so scared of asking someone out for a simple dinner.

It was no different now – Yoshi sat still, staring intensely at the beautiful amphibian before him. His eyes feasted on her slightly bulging chest muscles, the voluptuous curves of her fleshy thighs, the graceful sweeps and arcs of her thick pink tongue as it waved gently by her side. An absolute tidal wave of what to say and what to do smashed into his brain, rolling it around and around in a turbulent sea of words and imagined actions. The time had come to make his move right now, this very instant. No more Cuccoing out, no more fooling himself into thinking that there was always next time. For the first time ever, _she_ was coming to _him_ , a clear sign of invitation, an illustration of her passionate desire, her unceasing lust for his body, and Yoshi was determined not to let this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity presented on a beautiful aquamarine plate to slip away.

He jumped up, fell into a comically deep bow, and said the very first thing that popped into his mind:

"Hey, girl. Will you let me Hydro Pump into your Grejayjay?"

Toon Link rugby-tackled Yoshi onto the bed, forcing the blanket back into his mouth as he did so. Yoshi remained still. The violent tide that raged inside him just a second ago had abated, leaving nothing but deeply ingrained humiliation on the restless shores of regret. Toon Link turned to face Greninja, making a livid mental note to bash Ness's head in for polluting Yoshi with some of the corniest, dirtiest pick-up lines he had ever had the misfortune of hearing, and stammered, "Ha! I-ignore him – he tends to be a little wacko after he's just woken up –"

Far from being offended, however, Greninja simply looked confused. Though she understood the common language of the Smashers to a certain extent, there were still many words whose meanings she did not know, and at present she failed to understand what exactly Yoshi had told her. Hydro Pump she was well familiar with, but what exactly was a "Grejayjay"?

Toon Link studied the perplexed expressions on Greninja's face, breathing a silent sigh of relief that Yoshi's disastrous moment of idiocy had not resulted in anything worse than the mild bewilderment. Not willing to chance the possibility of her deciphering the not-so-cryptic sexual harassment, however, he quickly said aloud, "So, now that we're all up and ready, how about we get going to the Auditorium?"

Greninja looked down and tilted her head slightly. "Grejayjay?"

"No!" He pointed instead to the piece of paper that Greninja still kept in her hand, a note written by Samus and addressed to him and Yoshi to "wake the fuck up and get your asses down here". Evidently she understood, because she nodded curtly and straightened herself, all expressions of confusion replaced by her usual serious face. Rather than heading towards the door, however, she walked towards Yoshi's window, opening it and letting in a piercingly cold draft that caused Yoshi to wrap himself in his blanket once again and even made the clothed Toon Link shiver slightly.

"Um. Greninja? The way to the Audi –" he began, pointing to the door.

Greninja shook her head and motioned for him and Yoshi to come closer. The two looked at each other, shrugged, and then made their way beside Greninja, the latter still burning up in embarrassment as he stood as far away from the ninja frog as possible. It was the Hero of Wind's turn to gaze at Greninja in confusion, and he opened his mouth to speak again.

"I don't understand –"

He interrupted himself with a sharp intake of breath as Greninja winded him with the sudden impact of her long, flexible arm wrapping around him stomach. She did the same to Yoshi, and before either of them could fathom what she was up to, she leapt out backwards through the window and into the dead of the night, arching her body into a slight 'C' so as to fit through the small square. The burden of her two living luggage did not seem to hamper the graceful fluidity with which she sailed through the air, though her inexperience in ferrying passengers became apparent: Both Yoshi's and Toon Link's heads and legs slammed rather painfully into the head and sill of the window respectively as she jumped out of Yoshi's room.

" _Je suis désolée_!" she cried. Well, at least that was bound to wake them up. With a great pull of both arms the amphibious ninja flung the bodies of her companions directly above her, turning her own body around so that she was plummeting through the air face-down.

"Oh my Farore no! _I'm too young to die_!" Toon Link screamed, immediately regretting that he had left his Deku Leaf in his room. On the opposite arm and other end of the spectrum, Yoshi remained unfazed by it all. The pain, the fall, even the cold further exacerbated by the buffeting wind of his accelerated descent could not distract him from the sheer bliss of the phenomena that was Greninja holding his hand. _Greninja was holding his hand_. He gazed, stunned, and for the first time realized just how empty the spaces between his fingers had been. Each and every single one of the billion nerve cells in his right hand fired torrents of new information into his brain: The gentle slopes of her slickly coated phalanges, the delightfully squishy balls that rounded the tip of her fingers, the smooth stretches of the flaps of skin that webbed her hand, and in turn, webbed his. In an awed state of reverence Yoshi gave a quick squeeze. Her hand compressed compliantly, offering little resistance, inundating his nerves with even more concentrated smoothness and softness, squirting a delicate coating of mucus all over his palm.

Somewhere far off in the distance, Toon Link was still screaming his head off, but Yoshi barely paid him any mind. Fat globules of tears streamed forth from his eyes, floating up, up, up, quivering beads of liquid that distended and contracted and broke over themselves by the rolling motions of their amorphous shapes. Whether the source of these tears lied in the icy blast of wind that continuously whittled at his eyes or the overwhelming ecstasy of a dream finally come true, however, remained uncertain even to the dinosaur himself.

High above, a mouse and a fly swam gently through the vertical stream of crystals, touching each as though they were orbs of an inherent magical quality that enticed all to gaze at their splendor.

* * *

"Maybe we should just start without them," Link suggested.

They had been waiting for well over ten minutes since they realized that the usual two sleepyheads were missing. The crowd of Smashers before Mario, Link, and Samus was becoming increasingly schizophrenic: One half, such as Olimar, Bowser, and most of the younger Smashers, were slipping off into sleep again, heads nodding or leaning far back against the chairs or resting on the shoulder of an understanding comrade. The other half, such as Marth, Captain Falcon, and Meta Knight, were beginning to grow a bit restless, either moving about constantly on their seat or starting up conversation with the person next to them. It was an undesirable shift in mood and atmosphere, as the initial somber air and rapt attention had all but drifted away, a drastic contrast to the faces of Mario, Link, and Samus, which remained forever immutable in rigid grimness.

Mario, for the first time in a long time, found his annoyance at his trusty dinosaur steed grow to a level of frustration that instilled him a strong urge to smash his fist into something.

He took a breath and shook his head. "Everyone needs to be here for this," he grumbled, speaking in a low voice that seemed odd emerging from his mouth.

Samus tsked and scanned the entrance of the Auditorium for any signs of arrival of the culprits of the delay. "I thought Greninja would be back sooner than this," she quipped, voice straining with exasperation from the wait.

"Told you Zelda would have been faster in her Sheikah form," Link retorted, somewhat smugly.

"What, because she's flatter than ironed bread after she's transformed?" was the bounty huntress's snarky reply.

"Look!" came a shriek from the crowd, halting Link before he could retort with an equally snide remark.

All heads turned to the source of the noise. Bowser Jr. was standing inside his inseparable Clown Kart, pointing with a clawed finger to one of the large windows on the left wall. "Look!" he cried again, and look the crowd did to where he was pointing. What appeared to be silhouette of a giant arrowhead was shooting downward through the skies, but only for the brief instant the Smashers inside managed to glimpse it. Then, quite as suddenly as it appeared, the mysterious avian vanished – only to reappear again a split second later, right on the opposite side of the pane – or rather, right _against_ the pane, for with three loud _splats_ of meat against glass acting as their triumphant fanfare, the missing trio finally announced their arrival. The Pokémon's intention was to teleport them on the ledge by the window and then knock to be let in, but she had failed to consider the combined shadows of all three of them into calculation, resulting in a powerful overcharge and an entrance far less grandeur than she was hoping for.

Despite the assumed gravity of the gathering, most of the Smashers couldn't help but break out in laughter at the sight of Yoshi, Greninja, and Toon Link planted firmly against the glass. Fox and Robin, the two sitting closest to the window, jumped out of their seats and pushed the window up, allowing the two latecomers and their escort to drop in as they slowly slid down. Yoshi and Toon Link felt flat on the floor, but Greninja, in an effort to reclaim as much of her lost dignity as possible, landed on her feet, wedged a cigar in between her tongue and her lip, and took a deep drag after lighting it, showing not even the slightest hint of humiliation as the Smashers failed to repress their giggles. She faced the three Nintendirectors on the stage, gave a slight ninja bow, and in a flash leapt high up into the ceiling, before landing with nimble precision back to the empty seat she had previously occupied before volunteering to retrieve Yoshi and Toon Link.

"A-thank you, Greninja," Mario said appreciatively. Then, adopting a harsher tone of reprimand: "Yoshi! Toon Link! Will the two of you-a get up already?"

For the duo remained sprawled on the floor, swirling whirlpools replacing the pupils of their eyes as any attempts to stand up resulted in their flopping back to the ground. For the longest time Toon Link's body refused to obey any orders that would divorce him from the soothing solidity of the floor. Yoshi, meanwhile, was no longer even in the mansion, frolicking through fields of chrysanthemums and daisies and high grass with his hand tightly intertwined with Greninja's, hearts of aphrodisiac pink bubbling forth from this magical point where worlds collided. It took the two the greatest burst of willpower and strength to even just get up, and, eyes still whirlpools, haphazardly trudge their way to the seats at the back, somehow aware even in their dazed and confused state that Ness and Lucas had saved them both seats in the very back row.

"Man, a hurricane could shred through this mansion and the two of you would sleep through it like a pair of omega-hypnotized logs," Ness whistled lowly, still in snickers as he helped Yoshi to sit the correct end of his body onto the seat. Lucas gave a slight roll of his eyes, but this was the only acknowledgement he gave before resuming his intense stare at the stage where Mario was preparing to make his speech. He cleared his throat, a barely audible gesture that still somehow managed to stab through the wall of murmurs, giggles, and strayed attention to assail the ears of all he was addressing, so that there was an almost immediate halting of noise and movement as every Smasher shut their mouths and sat up straight. Here, then, finally, comes the reason for the sudden rude awakening of their nightly slumber, their insufferably stalled impatience at what could possibly warrant such a drastic calling in this late hour finally about to be satiated.

"We have called you here to inform you of an unfortunate incident that has occurred only a few hours back," Mario began, fighting to keep his voice low with somberness and free of the usual accented "–a's" he unconsciously injected in his daily speech. "Something terrible has just happened, and it is an incident that requires immediate and urgent action, as well as utmost cooperation from each and every single one of you, starting from this very second."

Backs inclined forward, eyes sharpened in concentration. The entire crowd waited with strained ears and bated breath and quickening hearts as Mario stood mouthing the words he was struggling to even wheeze out. What horrifying monstrosity of such abjectness could strike even the eloquent Nintedirector dumb? Mario looked to Link and Samus seated behind him, both of whom could give only the smallest nods. Mario turned back to the crowd. He closed his eyes, shutting out all in favor of blindness, and, fists balled rigidly by his sides, he uttered, in a quick, effective tone:

"Sonic's dead. His body was found headless in the Atrium just forty minutes past eleven last night."

He snapped his eyes open to find everyone still and lifeless, regarding him with wide eyes and open mouths. He had envisioned a gradual crescendo of murmurs, a flurry of movements as everyone turned within their seats to jabber away in shocked disbelief, a need to call for order as several voiced their displeasure at the audacity of his words. He had not anticipated stunned silence as a possible reaction, and this, in turn, stunned him too, so that he completely forgot what he had planned to say next. He could make out individual faces and reactions to his news in the crowd – Olimar, wide awake now with his eyes bulging like exposed hemispheres from his socket; Ganondorf, right fist supporting his chin as he gazed with raised eyebrow at Mario; Luigi, shuddering with teeth clenched and knees joined, even when he already knew; Peach, who simply stared back, nothing but muted surprise etching every line of her face as she covered her mouth with her hand –

"Shulk," Link whispered behind him, and the reminder brought Mario back to his senses and reminded him of what he needed to say next.

"Shulk has been found grievously injured alongside Sonic, as well, and is currently in a state of comatose as I sp-speak." He wavered a little bit at the end, and Mario took a deep breath, purging the images from his mind, steeling himself in anticipation of what he had to say next. "I have done my best as a doctor to ensure he has received all the medical –"

"Did you," Bowser interrupted loudly, "say that Sonic is _dead_?"

Mario felt something akin to a succession of cold knives stab into his lungs and brain.

"Dead," he affirmed, with an isolated sense of calmness that surprised even himself. "Dead," he repeated again, as the crowd finally began to show some signs of resistance, with a shake of a head here and a few "No's" there. A fleeting yet brutally intense memory of Sonic's decapitated body flashed in his mind, and Mario's left arm gave a violent twitch as it sprang up as though trying to grab something directly in front of it. The facade was only broken for a second, however, and Mario's voice remained level and solemn. "I understand that it may be difficult to believe, but –"

"It is impossible to believe," came another interruption. This time it came from Marth, who pushed back his seat and stood up to address Mario and the hundreds of eyes that turned to him."It is a practically an unwritten law in the Smash Universe that death of any sentient, organic being is a thing of fantastical whim, a phenomena rendered impossible in a realm where being struck by a sword poses as much punishment as being slapped across the cheek." He swept his arm briefly through the air, a motion that included Ike, Robin, and Lucina sitting to his left, and continued, "We of the the Fire Emblem Universe have crossed paths with Death numerous times, have almost even nearly succumbed to the embrace of its arms, from the sacred kingdom of Altea to the wartorn battlefields of Ylisse. We have watched helplessly and hopelessly as family and friends died before our very eyes, have suffered the unbearable agony of knowing that nothing we can do can ever bring them back to us." His chest filled with a great heave of oxygen, and then he said, louder than ever, "The fact that life can never cease to be in this particular time and space of the grand universe has always been a point of envy among us, as it is, I am sure, for many others here, where death continues to be a daily component of a harsher reality. How – _How_ can you expect us to believe that anyone here could have suddenly lost his life, as though the entire law of the universe has been ripped apart and rewritten in the span it took for us to fall asleep?"

The crowd murmured in general agreement as Mario sighed. Here it was, the accusations that likened him to a lying, deluded heretic. The time had come, then, to reveal the terrible truth that he had been stalling for so long. Mario raised his voice over the collective one of the crowd, and spoke, nearly yelled, "I think that every one of you might already know the answer to that one."

The noise stopped as the Smashers gazed at Mario in confusion and scratched their heads. Already knew the answer? But how? Marth was right – there was simply no being ever capable of completely reassembling the physical laws of the universe, such that the impossible became the possible, that the shadow of death be allowed to hang over everyone like an omnipresent shroud. Impossible, simply impossible. Unless –

"You don't mean –" Ganondorf growled, as he betrayed a sliver of surprise that was beginning to show itself in greater quantities on the faces of his peers who realized the answer the same time as he.

Mario nodded slowly. "Yes." He gave one more sweeping glance at his increasingly terrified audience before confirming the worst. "There lies a Glitch among our presence."


	13. The Glitch of Death

It was one of those psychological instances when the now existed as a state of vacuum, entrapping the brain in a capsule of white airlessness that insulates it from the electric signals of thoughts, isolates it from the compounds of devastating emotions. Though Yoshi understood perfectly the words that uttered from Mario's mouth, he could only sit, sit there and do absolutely nothing. A sea of poisonous dread steadily welled up inside him, stopping at his neck where the protective bubble that was enveloping his brain marked its lower boundary.

A sizable gloop of the toxic popped up and broke through the bubble, splashing a part of his brain. Outside the realm of his skull, an earthquake of a shudder rocked Yoshi's entire body, of a size and magnitude that shook him to his very core.

* * *

"We have, of course, seen many Glitches come and go in the past," Mario was saying, still with that somber hush of a voice that somehow seemed to amplify with each stressed syllable. "The little bug that bit Jigglypuff and made her Puff Up twice her size at the Bridge of Edin. Or the occasional rifts in time and space during the days of _Melee_ that allowed some of us to cancel our double jump. They were, at worst, just slight annoyances that barely posed any impacts on our lives. But what we have in our hands now is not some mildly inconvenient insect or a harmless break in physics. It is, without a doubt, the most dangerous Glitch to ever exist in the Smash Universe – the Glitch of Death. It is a monster, a demon whose sole intention in this universe is to claim as many of our lives as possible, knowing no restraints as it distorts the rules of our world and kills with a blood –"

"Excuse me." A loud grunt from the front row cut across Mario's voice, and he stopped and frowned as he turned his eyes to the source of the interruption. "Forgive me for interrupting," Ganondorf continued loudly, sounding not at all wishing to be forgiven as the often-contemptuous flesh of his lips slit the left of his cheeks in condescending scorn, "but how do we know that what you speak of death and Glitches is truly so? I mean –" Ganondorf slowly reclined against the back of his chair, smirk climbing higher up his face "– it is rather difficult to place much faith by the words of a man whose "deaths" simply involve him flailing around like a pathetic little fish before dropping out of view to the tune of a jaunty jingle. Perhaps all Sonic needed was a little – what do you call it – a 1-Up Mushroom? Have you ever thought of that, my dearly confused fellow?"

"Can I kill him now?" Link said loudly, drawing his Master Sword and pointing it straight at Ganondorf's forehead.

"Certainly you may, if I don't kill you first," Ganondorf said, no longer with snide mockery as he rose to the fullest height of his stature and drew his own Warlock Blade. He walked one step forward, and though there was considerable distance between the first row of seats and the stage, the extended lengths of the two swords were able to clash with a resounding clank that once again administered silence throughout the entire mansion.

"A-stop it, both of you!" Mario cried, voice cracking in a height of panic as he brought a hand to Link's chest and pushed him back down to his seat. "Link, _sit down_ and don't get up again. How a-stupid can you be?" The Hylian was about to protest, with a violent motion that almost thrust him back up and a wild contortion of his mouth that exhaled a vehement, rebellious breath, but seemed to think better of himself at the last moment as he closed his mouth and thrust the Master Sword back into his scabbard, though he continued to glower at Ganondorf with arms crossed tightly across his chest.

"I a-understand," Mario spoke again, "that the abruptness and shocking quality of this news may render it hard to believe for many of you." His eyes floated over Ganondorf, who was slowly returning to his seat with his gaze still fiercely concentrated on Link, before addressing the crowd again. "Allow me to demonstrate that what we are telling you now –" he drew something from his pocket " – is not a product of any malicious deceit."

Many of the Smashers in the back few rows leaned forward and craned their necks in order to get a better view of what Mario was holding, but the need for this was soon laid to rest as Mario held it up, high and mighty, for all to see. It was a dagger, small and plain in design, its silver blade shining hotly by the light of the ceiling.

"Now watch carefully," he said aloud as he brought the dagger back down, "because I don't a-want to have to do this again." He pulled the red cloth of his overalls back to expose his left arm and hovered the gleaming edge of the dagger over it. He took a deep, steadying breath to still his shaking right arm. The eyes of every Smasher were fixed only at the point on Mario's left arm which the dagger would strike, the point, if they were to believe his words, would soon turn as red as the cap that he wore. He breathed heavily again, for the last time, he told himself, as the hand which held the dagger refused to stay still. Don't think of it, don't think of it, just do it, quickly now, before you –

The dagger plunged down and made a slashing movement.

The Smashers emitted a collective gasp.

There was nothing. No blood, not even a cut, for just before knife would have made contact with flesh Mario had whisked his left wrist away, so that the dagger cut nothing but air and the only red that materialized was the blushes on each of his cheeks.

"Oops!" Mario let out a bizarre mixture of a high-pitched gasp and a nervous giggle as he snapped his arm back into place. "Forgive me, my hand-a slipped – must have been the wind –"

Just a simple cut, nothing more. An incision, if you will. Yes, that – nothing more than a small incision, the gentlest stab to strip away the tiniest strip of flesh, just enough to expose a visible pool of red for all to see and believe. The pain wouldn't even be all that bad, come to think of it. Mario steeled himself for the second time as he started with the blade resting against his skin. Just a quick pull of his right arm and it'd be over in an instant. Just a quick pull of his right arm. Just a quick –

The dagger made a slashing movement.

The Smashers emitted a collective gasp.

There was still nothing, still no blood nor cut. The arm remained where it needed to be this time, but Mario had struck the dagger in a blind, upwards angle, as though he was sketching the imaginary hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle with his arm acting as its base.

"Oh for Kraid's sake," Samus snapped as she marched forward and snatched the dagger from Mario. He looked as though he was about to collapse, teetering away as Samus pushed him off to the side. "Watch and learn," she said with grim coolness. She whisked off the glove of her left hand, pulled down the fabric of her Zero Suit, and, with a quick drop of her right arm, vertically slit the skin of her wrist.

She raised her arm. A line of wet blood streamed from the gash and ran down her arm in dripping trails of red, a beacon of gore and sliced capillaries that contrasted sharply with the remaining blue of her suit. When she was sure that she had held it up long enough she brought her arm back down and, with a quick sweep of her right hand, flicked some of the blood to where Ganondorf was sitting.

"Proof enough for you?" she asked disdainfully, looking down at him with nothing but annoyed contempt in her eyes.

"Quite," was his simple, satisfied reply.

"Umm." Mario cleared his throat and walked back to the center of the stage, taking out a strip of gauze from his pockets. "A-thank you, Samus, for that excellent demonstration," he said as he put the gauze in her hands. "Of course, I could have done it perfectly by myself, but – well, it is important that we all get a bit of the spotlight, after all –"

Mario quickly turned away before he could become vaporized to a crisp from the ensuing glare with which Samus pierced him, such was the intensity of the flames that burned in her pupils, before she extinguished them with a roll of her eyes and decided that it wasn't worth it.

"Now that you know that what we're telling you is not some kind of a joke," Mario spoke again, his tone reverting back to being confident and business-like, "listen carefully to the next set of instructions. There will be a few changes now, all in the interest of our maximum safety to ensure all of our survivals. The West Wing, firstly, is strictly out of bounds. Smashers are encouraged to spend their free time in the privacy of their own rooms, or in venues with a large public turnout – like at the Dining Hall, during dinner. Certain parts of the Central Wing will be blocked off as well, most obviously the Tournament Hall, Classic Mode, Smash Run, the like – those that involve any form of violence which we no longer have the luxury to afford. It is also imperative that you stick in groups of three when you move around, as –"

"Hold on," Bowser shouted as he drowned out his public enemy number one's voice with his own. Mario felt a an irritable urge to scream at the top of his lungs for no more interruptions, an urge made all the more difficult to resist from the fact that it was Bowser interrupting him of all people.

" _What_?"

"You don't seriously think we're going to stay here, do you?" The incredulous manner in which he said these words, and the genuine expressions of bafflement and slight offense that curled his fiery eyebrows and turned his snout into a frown, seemed to indicate no malicious intent in the interruption. "If what you're saying is true, and there really is some crazed, psychopath of a Glitch running around the mansion at this very moment waiting to kill us all, what makes you think we're going to stay? Let me finish," he growled, holding up his beefy claw as Mario opened his mouth and uttered a brief beginning of a syllable. "If the lives of me and my children are at serious stake right now, if at any given moment I have to worry about any nine of us dying at this very moment, we're getting the hell away from this place. We leave now. Not tomorrow. Not after breakfast. _Now_." He stood up, pushing his chair back, and signaled for his children to follow. The Koopalings exchanged looks of doubt only for a second; they had long since learned not to question their father's decisions, partly out of blind filialness, partly out of genuine belief that daddy knew best. They revved up their Clown Cars and began to make the necessary turns and drives as Bowser turned his giant spiked shell to the stage. "If anyone else wants to come along," Bowser said in a tone of finality as he turned his head slightly, "you're more than welcome to tag along. No one – _no one_ – should be made to stay in this literal hellhole of a place any longer. You're out of your mind if you do." And with a triumphant, snide smugness, the Koopa King was just about to take his first step to officially leave the Smash Mansion when –

"Bowser," Mario said sharply, before anyone else could fully entertain the notion of leaving the place for good. "Sit down, Bowser." He stared, a quiet, deadly sort of anger burning in his eyes, mouth locked in a cold frown, eyebrows viciously cutting over the top of his eyes. "You're going nowhere, so sit down, yeah? Don't make it difficult for us."

"Going nowhere, am I?" Bowser repeated, turning his head so that all could see the mocking smirk with which he regarded Mario's words. "Why's that, Mario? Because you said so? My, my. You know, I don't take kindly to orders… Especially when they come from such a small man as yourself." He clenched his fists and stretched his arms over his chest, blowing out steam from his nostrils. "I suppose you could… _Punch_ some sense into me. Been a while since we last fought, hasn't it?"

"There will be no need for that," Mario said again in that same cold demeanor. The tension effectively killed the fresh bouts of murmurs and panic as his hand jumped into his pocket and closed tightly around something. The action did not go unnoticed by Link, who rose slightly from his seat behind Mario. "Mario – you're not going to –"

"Well, then, I guess you just won't be stopping me and my children from leaving now, won't you?" Bowser was continuing to goad, his band of eight Koopalings constantly shifting their eyes from their father to Mario, beaming with pride that their father was putting up such a good fight against his archnemesis. Indeed, almost every Smasher's eyes were in a continuous state of motion as the pupils bounced back and forth between the plumber and the koopa, almost as though they were watching a fierce game of tennis in one of their Mario Tennis matches. The eyes lingered over the taunting manner in which Bowser held up his right leg. "I~'m, getting out of the mansion~" Bowser sang in a mocking tune as he planted his right foot on the ground and lifted up his left. "And there's nothing Mario can do to stop me ~"

It came out in a flash, so much so that those who were watching Mario could have sworn that he had the gun in his hand the whole time. It was impossible to make out its finer details in the distance they were from the stage, but its immediate identity was made clear as the square eye of its muzzle gazed straight into the center of the back of Bowser's head. A unified exhale of a gasp ran through the crowd, the Koopalings all let out screeching shrieks as they skirted for cover, and Bowser himself stood perfectly still, all derision and tomfoolery exempt from his face as he turned around fully and eyed the weapon that was now aimed squarely at the center of his snout.

"Is that what I think it is?" he growled, and though he tried to mask it with his usual untamed expression of evil savagery, he could not hide the glimpse of surprised fear that had betrayed his countenance and showed clearly who had the upper hand.

"If you'd like to find out, be my guest. Walk out the door," Mario breathed, throat almost choking as he issued the threat. He readjusted his grip on the gun, and in the moment his fingers opened up the Smashers could see, briefly, something white-hot pulse through the sides of the barrel in a linear streak.

Bowser smiled and put his hands up in defeat. "You got me, Mario," he said, motioning with a nod of his head for his children to return. "You got me." He walked slowly back to his chair, which was wider and taller than most of the other chairs to account for his height and weight and shell, and sat back down. The Koopalings followed, taking their original positions around their father's seats, gazing uneasily at the gun still in Mario's hand.

"I must say, Mario," Bowser said, arms resting on the sides of his chair as he watched the Italian plumber return the gun into the back pocket of his overalls, "I'm rather shocked that you would use… _That_ against me. That's something that not even me or Ganondorf would ever do, never in our wildest dreams." He shook his head as he leaned further back against his seat. "I mean, there's evil, and then there's _that_ , you know? Kind of surprising, to say the least, coming from you."

"If you had waited and heard the full explanation, you would have known the reason for my threat," Mario responded, unconsciously brushing the sweat off his forehead. Bowser snorted in disbelief, a gesture which Mario ignored as he took another deep breath and proceeded to address the crowd again. "There is a reason, and a very valid one at that, as to why we can't afford to have anyone here leave the walls of the Smash Mansion," Mario said grimly, slowly sweeping his eyes over the crowd, who could only stare back in fearful, growing anticipation of what he had to say next. "It is, this time, not for our own safety, but rather for the safety of the entire city – no, the entire world. This Glitch – it operates in a peculiar, but undeniably effective and highly deadly, fashion. Through some unknown means that only it is capable of, it possess the body of the host it wishes to use for its murderous deeds. Which means that right here, right now –" he took a deep breath, a necessary precaution in order to successfully drag the heavy words out of his throat, as the Smashers drew nearer, all in utter apprehension of what he had to say next "– onefngnfjd." Not deep enough. He cleared his throat and took another breath, deeper this time, and tried again. "One – one of us here, sitting among us now, is the actual Glitch."

When would it end, this onslaught of horror after horror? Mario did not know what was worse: To be the deliverer of such wretched news, or to be the one bearing it. The reaction was worse than he had ever expected, simply because there was no singular one that prevailed. There were the shocked gasps of Peach and Pit, the enlarged eyes of Olimar and Rosalina. There were the terror-stricken faces of the Ice Climbers and King Dedede, the grim coolness of Falco and Ganondorf. There were the silent stillness of Marth and Lucario, the uncontrollable twitches of Toon Link and Villager. It took a great deal of effort on the part of Mario, Link, and Samus, as well as some of the calmer Smashers, to instil hush and stillness back into the crowd, and when Mario was finally ready to continue, he himself was visibly shaken, as though the very act of relaying the dreaded news had taken a big bite out of him.

"It is for this reason we can't let anyone – _anyone_ , leave this mansion," Mario started again with a trembling voice that indicated just how much he himself was devastated by what he already knew. "We do not know who out of the fifty-odd Smashers here is the Glitch. For all you know, it could very well be the person sitting next to you –" at this several of the Smashers turned to face their seated neighbor before quickly looking back at Mario, hearts thundering ever painfully for those whose eyes actually met. "As long none of us know who this Glitch can be, we cannot risk anyone going out. For the greater good of this entire Universe as we know it." Mario closed his eyes, consolidating what he had to say next. The weight, finally, was easing, and with each tumbling word he felt strength gradually return to him. "If, however, every one of us follows closely the instructions that I had previously given, there is no reason to fear the Glitch, no reason to worry about being murdered on the spot. It is absolutely imperative that every one of us stay in groups of at least three at all times, for it in the Glitch's best interests to attack us when we are at our most vulnerable – _alone_." He managed to get a firm grip of his voice now, and was able to place effective emphasis on the harshness of that word. "Do not stay in groups of two. Do not fall into the trap of thinking that you know for absolute sure that who you are alone with is not the Glitch. It is impossible to be absolutely sure. Always hang around, at the very least, in groups of three, for even if one of the three is the actual Glitch, he will have a much harder time of… _Eliminating_ you both, simply because it means twice the work, twice the risk of being drawn attention to." He stopped and observed the crowd once more. Perhaps it was the effect of time that dulled the initially-staggering trauma of the news, or the fact that he was laying down some rules now, rules that, however imposing, would make all the difference in the world between life and death, rules that served as a beacon of hope and life in this impending darkness that covered them all; whatever the reason, it seemed as though his fellow Smashers were, in unison, gaining some form of peace of mind, however unstable, however tinted with agonizing worry about the disasters that could still transpire, and seeing the faith which they all seemed to place by his words gushed strange affection into Mario at this strange time. Feeling a sense of camaraderie he had never before felt, Mario asked, "Are there – are there any questions so far?"

"Just one," growled a familiar voice. Bowser stood up from his chair again, but this time there was no malice or contempt that characterized his face as he looked, quite seriously, back into Mario's eyes. "I think it's only fair, Mario, that I ask you this. Don't take it personally, if it's really you in there, or think it's because we're otherwise sworn enemies in almost every circumstance. But how do we know – how do we know you're not the Glitch, Mario? How do we know if what's talking to us now is only a shell of the Mario we used to know? How do we that you haven't been possessed, and that you're actually the Glitch working to lead us all into your deadly trap, where you can then start to pick us off one by one?"

"You don't," Mario replied simply. "No matter how much I deny it, no matter how many times I tell you that what you see in front of you is the real Mario – there's no knowing for sure whether I'm Mario or I'm the Glitch. But the same can be said for everyone else here, can't it? Only one person here knows for sure who everyone is, and that's the Glitch himself. It's pointless to start pointing fingers and passing rash assumptions, for the consequence of doing such can be fatal.

"As for your concern as to whether this isn't all just an elaborate trap to lure you all into your eventual deaths – you have my guarantee that all three of us –" here Mario motioned to Link and Samus behind him "– came up with these rules. Even if I, or one of the other two, was the Glitch, there would be two more of us to ensure that no potentially deadly rule be imposed."

Bowser nodded and sat back down. Mario asked whether there were any more questions; there weren't, so he, too, sat down, drained of almost all energy to continue talking. Link stood up to take his place, and what followed was a repeat of what Mario had said earlier – that the Western Wing and specific parts of the Central Wing were now out of limits, as well as several new regulations and restrictions: To refrain from using any of the Bathrooms, to call two others to be your escorts before exiting your room, to always try to be where the majority of the Smashers were at any given time. They had gathered in the Auditorium at fifteen minutes past four; it was six o'clock by the time they finished with a full five minutes of silence, called for by Mario, in memory of Sonic, who must have surely died valiantly as a first victim to the hands of the Glitch. Those who did not know the blue hedgehog well simply looked on during the silence, occasionally feeling the bitter sting of tears in their eyes that would disappear with a few quick blinks; others, the ones who had every right to call themselves his friends, or at least knew him to a certain degree, wept unashamedly, letting the tears flow freely, or else (as was the case for the more hardened, less emotional) looked on into blank nothingness, wetness threatening to burst from their eyes.

"One more thing," Mario announced at the last minute as the Smashers were finally dismissed. Many had remained seated even after they were given the OK to leave; the few who had gotten up had done so slowly, aimlessly, as they made hesitant forages to the entrance of the Auditorium. "Lucario –" the Pokémon looked up immediately, ears pricked as he gazed with intense attention at the addressee of his name "– stay behind for a while. Don't leave just yet. The rest, you may go."

His pulse had been on a rollercoaster of a ride throughout the entire emergency meeting, and it appeared as though it wasn't going to stop anytime soon. Lucario felt the panic return, and his heart worked itself up harder than ever from the direct calling of his name. He could feel curious eyes boring holes into him as he sat, confused and speechless, while Greninja and Charizard both shot him a questioning look. He stared pleadingly at Mario even as he refused to look at him any longer, and, quite uncharacteristic of him, could only fear the worst as the evil spirits of paranoia began biting into his brain.

* * *

"Holy hell," Ness muttered as he slid down his seat, looking up at the ceiling and twiddling with his cap. "What a night, huh, guys? What – what did you think of it, Yoshi? Yoshi? _Yoshi_!"

For the dinosaur had already leapt off his chair and was dashing out of the Auditorium, pushing his way past the brave front leading the way for the rest of the Smashers, disregarding all that Mario and Link had said about sticking together in a large group. The bubble had burst, his brain was flooded with black, and all that remained in his thoughts as he ran desperately to Luigi's room was apple, apple, apple.


	14. GLITCH

The lights, for once, were on in the mansion, but Yoshi could see nothing but an intangible mess of blood and darkness, instead guided by an automatic fear that was able to compel his feet in the right direction to Luigi's room as he ran, ran, ran. Such were the thoughts that were running through his mind, an abstract amalgamation of apple, apple, Glitch, apple, apple, apple, death, apple, Sonic's dead, Glitch, apple, apple, Glitch, Glitch, death, apple, apple, Glitch, apple, Sonic's dead, death, death, Glitch, apple, death, death, death…

The elevator finally shuddered to a halt. He squeezed his body through the rectangular gap before the door slid open fully, dashing through the corridors of the L, M, N, O, P floor. The _thump_ , _thump_ , _thump_ , of his boots on the carpet reverberated within the walls of the hallway, and the _thump, thump, thump,_ of his heart, as it gorged itself on bursts of bloodied adrenaline, trapped his mind in a box of pulsating beats that bounced him to and fro, to and fro, between its crushing dimensions.

He skidded to a halt by Luigi's room, and felt a rope knot itself tightly against his brain. The door was not closed. Its sweeping arc was interrupted by some lumpy mass of white and plastic. A second, two, a minute, an hour – how long he did not know, but Yoshi stood before Luigi's room, motionless, speechless, thoughtless, as he stared at the tumor of a packet that wedged itself innocently between the door and its jamb.

He did move, eventually, but only under the snatching assumption that the recent happening of which he was told was an isolated incident, that his own, personal experiences of the hours before bore no relation to anything that had transpired tonight. He grabbed the door by its side, and, with strangely strong determination in spite of the dread of what he was about to see – or rather, what he WASN'T about to see – wrenched it open and stepped, for the third time, into Luigi's room.

An absolute mess of a chest, overflowing with things that shared no common value and surrounded by miscellaneous other objects of equal randomness, greeted him silently as the lights of the chandelier flickered on. An immediate chill that swept over his body greeted him as well, for the window over Luigi's table was open, letting in a rush of wind that blew the fan letters tacked on the wall, along with a mound of snow that slowly turned to slush on the desk. The open window seemed to be the only major difference that had scarred the room in his nightly absence, and yet it registered no effect on Yoshi as the dinosaur, too engulfed in a separate detail to notice, bent down and pulled the chest out from under the desk. The scarf, the shirt, the gloves – he threw all behind him, adding to the mess on the floor, all the while thinking, hoping, praying, that it was all just a crazy coincidence, that the sudden presence of the Glitch shared no connection with the events at the shopping mall the day before, that the apple would still be there, safely trapped within his egg, further concealed by the wrappings of –

The bag contained nothing but the shattered shards of his egg.

It felt as though his soul was ripped from his body. He felt nothing, thought nothing, _was_ nothing, as though his consciousness had been siphoned away from the shell of his body and he was just meat and tissue, capable of nothing, except to stare eternally at the broken remnants of the last layer of hope. His legs gave way and he fell to his rear on the floor. The pieces danced momentarily from the movement before returning to their immobile states at the bottom of the bag. He entered a void of black, swimming aimlessly in a cesspit of overwhelming darkness that would eventually manifest itself into regret, guilt, paranoia, of an atlas size and depth he would have to bear on his shoulders throughout his life and death.

In this mental darkness, suddenly, materialized an orb of ruby light. It grew bigger and bigger, rotating about a vertical axis, swirling more and more light into its rotund shape as it twirled. It slowed gradually as it approached the size of a fist, and in its final orbit, it turned at a deliberate pace, revealing, slowly, the gashed orifices of its eyes and mouth.

It was silent for a while, gazing at the internal incarnation of Yoshi with a crescent smile that occupied more than two-thirds of its lower half. Then –

"Thank you," it whispered. " **I** will not forget your sacrifice."

* * *

Though he was bursting with questions, Lucario remained mute as he followed Mario, Link, and Samus up the stairs that would lead to their offices. The Italian plumber had hushed him before he could even send a single telepathic word, telling him to remain silent until they were in safely secluded from the rest of the mansion and any inquisitive ears that might hear their replies. Consequently, he found his normally emotionally stable state falter with every step he took, feeling the sense of foreboding dread grow heavier and heavier, until it took all his willpower to keep himself from collapsing when they finally reached the door to Mario's office.

The first thing he did the moment the door shut behind him was to fire the question that was burning inside him to the three guilty minds.

'What do you –'

"We a-know it's not you," Mario cut across immediately.

Colors, scent, chill, even the taste of air as it gushed into his mouth – all came flooding back into Lucario, overwhelming every facet of his being. Stars jumped before his vision as, quite suddenly, the interior of the Nintendirector office materialized before him – a large, circular room that once belonged to Master Hand, spacious enough to fit three massive tables for Mario, Link, and Samus, each characterized by typical office supplies and personal objects that breathed a little bit of personality into such an unremarkable place – for instance, an aquarium containing a menacing Skultera on Samus's desk. In wooziness he shot his right paw out to steady himself. It grasped something cold, metallic, cylindrical, and for a while Lucario stood still, massaging his head with gentle, circular rubs of his other paw. When he felt his balance return to him, he pushed himself off of what he had been leaning against.

He looked down. He had been holding the side rails of a hospital bed, something Lucario had never before seen in his time in the Smash Mansion. Lying near-motionless, cease for the gentle rise and fall of his chest, was Shulk. His body was partially blocked from view by tubes and wrappings and portable machines that flashed numbers of alien significance. His eyes showed no sign of opening even as Mario pulled back his blanket and lifted up his gown, inspecting a thick patch of black-red bandages that protruded from the pale surface of his midriff.

'How – how is he?' Lucario asked, unable to tear his eyes away from the sealed entrance to a fresh wound.

"He'll survive." Mario pulled the gown back down and was now inspecting the IV drip that hung over the right side of Shulk's head like an attached ghost. "He got lucky. Whatever impaled him just sort of wedged itself between his liver and his stomach, without doing any real damage to either." He sighed, and Lucario felt his own stomach twist itself around his liver as he imagined the visceral image of something long and sharp prod his internal organs, a sight further exacerbated by Mario's new gruff and no-nonsense tone.

"We have a question for you, Lucario," Link said.

The anxiety returned, but it was nothing like the body-breaking malaise that had inflicted itself upon him just a few seconds before. He could feel the weight in Link's words, but Mario's assurance, though seemingly too confident for its own good, alleviated the burden somewhat, and Lucario's voice was steady as he turned to face Link, who was resting against his desk with arms crossed. 'What is it?'

He played with a Zelda Amiibo that he kept on his desk, fingers flying around on her plastic form as he looked down at it, as though he was addressing the figurine instead of Lucario. "We're not expecting a positive answer from this. But – your Aura allows you to detect the presence of both friend and foe, correct?"

'Correct,' Lucario replied, knowing immediately where Link was going with this. 'Blue for friend, and red for foe.'

"So – last night – do you remember – did you detect –"

'No,' Lucario told him, shaking his head. His memory was as crisp as ever, and a quick recount of his nightly roll call just a few hours back was all it took for Lucario to come up with the answer. 'I checked. Everyone was blue, and I don't remember a single red soul.'

Link nodded, face showing not even the slightest twinge of disappointment as he placed the Zelda Amiibo back on his desk. He wasn't lying when he said that they were braced for a negative. As he stood before all of them, Lucario wondered whether it was for this sole purpose that they had invited him exclusively to confirm something to which he had no answer to. Then it struck him immensely odd that they had placed such great deal of trust into him in the first place, and was just about to voice his inquisition on the source of this trust when Samus fired another question at him.

"Well, what about now?" she urged as she tore off the gauze from her arm and threw it into a waste basket near her desk. An almost-invisible line was all that remained of her self-mutilation. "Do you see anything now? When was the last time you checked?"

Lucario held up a paw and closed his eyes. 'Just one minute,' he muttered, and then he crossed his arms and mustered, deep within him, the power of his Aura. Mario, Link, and Samus watched, silently and intently, as a blue will-o-wisp emanated from Lucario's form – softly at first, almost evanescent and shimmery in quality, gradually burning brighter, hotter, stronger, until a fire of blue blazed forth from his meditative stance. Before him, the trio vanished into wisps of concentrated blue energy, floating before him even as his invisible eye seeped throughout the entire mansion, unlocking, slowly, gradually, shapes of duller blue.

When he was sure he was done, Lucario opened his eyes. The Aura sunk into his body immediately and the world returned to its solid state.

'Nothing,' he asserted, panting slightly as he once again leaned against Shulk's bed for support.

"We thought as much," Samus sighed as she walked behind her desk. She sat down and stared with a slight frown at the pages of a large, open book. Sensing that there would be no further questioning, Lucario instead turned to Mario, who was bending over Shulk, sealing new bandages over the stitched wound.

'I need to ask you something,' he said.

"What is it?" Mario got up, chucking the soiled bandages over his head into the same waste basket where Samus had disposed of her gauze just before.

'You – all three of you – how do you know I'm not the one? How do you know I'm not the Glitch?'

"Before we tell you that, you need to promise us something."

'What?'

Mario stared, long, cold, and hard, into Lucario's eyes as he put away the doctor's gloves he had been wearing and put on his regular plumber ones. "Your mastery of the Aura is the reason why we've called you here. It will no doubt be a valuable asset in our battle against the Glitch. Even if you can't identify it now, the time will surely come when pinpointing its exact position will become an imperative tool to ensure that no more lives are lost." He took a breath, and continued. "There is a reason why we trust you, which ties in with the very nature of this Glitch itself – but before we **WILL** can reveal that, we need your word. That in joining our efforts to eradicate the Glitch once and for all, you swear to it that all which we'll tell you now will not be relayed to any outsider, no matter how small the probability that he's the Glitch, no matter what we tell you about who can be trusted, and who, not."

'Do you really expect me to go around telling everyone what clearly is classified material?' Lucario asked, somewhat offended.

"Answer the question."

'I – no. I mean, yes. Yes, of course I won't tell anyone.'

"Are you absolutely sure?"

' _Yes_.'

Mario gave a small nod as Lucario looked, resolute, at the plumber. There was a brief silence as his words cemented into the atmosphere of the room, broken as Samus called out, "Lucario. Come here."

She was signaling to the open book on her desk. Lucario walked forward, finally satisfied that the mystery of it all was about to be answered – but before he could take a good look at the pages Samus was beckoning to, she closed it immediately and held it up for Lucario to see. "Do you know what this is?"

Lucario frowned as he studied the cover of the book. It was absolutely massive compared to most others he had seen, with Samus using both hands to hold up the hefty bundle of papers. The cover seemed to be made of some thick leather, painted pure white with not a single decorative pattern or ornament to grace it any endearing or captivating quality. The spine seemed to be thicker than the arms that were hoisting it, and was the only part of the exterior that bore any words – or word, as it said simply: **KILL** GLITCH.

'A book of Glitches?' Lucario guessed intelligently.

"Correct," Samus replied, panting slightly as she dropped the book back down with a _thwump_. She turned the pages back to where she was previously, marked by a folded triangle in the upper left corner. "The answers to what you're looking for, and everything else – they're all here." She tapped at the lines and lines of scrawled, childish writing that sprawled in rectangles all over the page. Lucario, heart racing in a mixture of excitement and anxiety at what he was about to find out, read from the very first word:

* * *

THE GLITCH OF DEATH

status: unpatched

Also known as 07. This Glitch was originally conceptualized as a demonic spawn of Whispy Woods, serving its role as the final boss. Similar to 0 and 02, its intentions contrast sharply with the childish, whimsical design of the characters and setting of the _Kirby_ franchise, with an intent far murderous beyond that of its fellow inhabitants. Contrary to popular video game tropes, 07 did not seek power or dominance over the world with its brutal killing spirit. It killed simply because it wanted to kill, simply to satisfy its endless perverted desires of murder, an itch that could otherwise never be scratched.

07 was ultimately scrapped when Sakurai stopped working on _Kirby_ games, but was brought back for use in the Smash Bros. universe. Fortunately for us and unfortunately for it, time constraints once again forced Sakurai to stop before he could fully incorporate it into the cancelled Story Mode. It exists, however, hidden away in a dimension that transcends the time and space of this world. While never fully deleted, the chance of ever unlocking the wrath of the Glitch of Death remains infinitesimally tiny, due to the nature of the oddly specific conditions required to unleash it.

The location of the portal that leads to where the demon is locked in is unknown. What is known, however, is that three items, fluid in state, must be allowed to mix on the floor at a distance of 11 meters and a bearing of 96 degrees from the center of the portal. These measurements must be precise to the thousandth decimal point; even a reading off by 1 trailing behind a point and a thousand 0's will result in failure. The exact identity of the items, like the location of the portal, is once again unknown, but I have ascertained that each must hail from the following three universes: _The Legend of Zelda_ , _Metroid_ , and, of course, the original home of the demon, _Kirby_. Once these liquids, equal in concentration and quantity, have been allowed to mix, a playable character in the Smash Bros. roster must then step into the resulting puddle.

Even the identity of this Smasher is highly specific. The first requirement is that the Smasher must wear shoes that possess flat soles. Anyone in footwear that does not have flat soles, or anyone who wears nothing on his feet, therefore, remains incapable of unlocking the entrance to this portal. Stranger still is the fact that neither of the Links is able to open this dimensional doorway, at least according to the data that Crazy helped me mine. The reason for the existence of either of these requirements is likely a product of how the physics of the Smash Bros. universe is currently programmed.

Given such explicit and peculiar circumstances, the probability of ever executing the procedures to unleash the Glitch of Death is laughably low. This, of course, can only be a good thing, for the consequence of 07 being unleashed, as it was originally called, can only be disastrously deleterious. According to the lore from the unfinished plans Sakurai left, 07 was a demonic soul locked deep underground in the _Kirby_ world, intended to be sealed forever due to its wreaking absolute destruction upon the fellow inhabitants of its otherwise innocent and peaceful world. One day, one of Whispy's roots, perennially lengthening and thickening as it burrowed further underground, broke through the chamber in which 07 was sealed and absorbed its soul, which was only too eager to be siphoned away and continue its postponed psychopathic carnage from where it left off.

07 did not possess Whispy Woods. It saw no value in taking over the body of a host that would, for the most part, remain rooted to a permanent spot. Instead, it took the form of one of Whispy's apple, indistinguishable in appearance to the other fruits that Whispy bore, save for a little sheen to further entice any passing creature to consume it. "Entice" is the wrong word; the sheen was the work of one of the last remaining dark magic that 07 still clung onto despite its ghostly form, and anything capable of sight would be forced to consume its new, temporary, botanic body. The act of digestion would shatter the final seal which locked away the full powers of 07, allowing it to take over the body of the unfortunate creature and wreak further havoc upon the world.

The backstory of 07 is largely insignificant, as Sakurai surely had a different story worked out when he brought it over for its use in Smash. I have asked Kirby, casually, as to whether he knew anything about a separate incarnation of 0 other than 02; he has replied with a negative. I do not doubt that he is lying. However, while the lore of 07, or the Glitch of Death as it shall now be called, is not directly applicable to its presence in Smash, it does still provide imperative hints to its current state. It exists as an apple, even within the universe of Smash Bros., and exudes the same quality of magic that forces the bearer of the set of eyes to first look upon it to eat it so that he or she can serve his or her subservient role as an eternal conduit. I have discovered other sets of data that suggests that, in the events when the procedures that open up the portal to the Glitch are successfully executed, the magic of the demon _will force the portal to close and keep it closed until the activator consumes the apple, whereupon which it will open again_. This is extremely important information: If, ever, the Glitch of Death is unleashed from where it is currently locked away, then we know that the possessed must tick the previous requirements specified above. The Glitch of Death, therefore, will never possess the Links, as they lack the means of even unlocking it in the first place. The same can be said for any Smasher who lacks the relevant footwear.

How will we ever know if the Glitch of Death has ever been unleashed? Well, that's easy: The Glitch earns it name from its ability to whisk away the privilege of what is essentially eternal life and cursing us all with the possibility of permanent death. We will all be exposed for the delicate bundle of flesh and meat that we actually are, no longer kept indestructibly whole by the laws of the Smash Universe, which would surely have been distorted by the power of the Glitch. Whether this ability to manipulate the workings of the world is exclusive only to turning death into a reality, however, is unknown.

And yet, even though I shudder in irrepressible fear as I write all this, I find comfort in three important pieces of information, two of which just might prove to be what saves us all. The first, and the most intuitive, is that the probability of ever unleashing the wrath of the Glitch of Death remains almost impossibly low, one in several billions, and it is not a stretch to declare that there may never come the day when we would have to endure its rapture. The second lies in how **YOU** this demon executes its psychopathic tendencies. Sakurai notes that 07 would have absorbed the souls of all that it kills, allowing it to harness the respective powers and abilities of what it kills to become even more powerful. Since 07 has remained almost completely unchanged in its transition from _Kirby_ to _Smash_ , this means that, ironically, _anybody that the Glitch of Death kills has a chance to be saved_. As I have researched extensively, the soul of any denizen of the Smash Universe can exist temporarily without a body as long as there exists a Patch, of which I still have a decently numbered supply of.

The third, and most important, knowledge is that the Death Glitch _can be defeated_ – in _two_ different ways, in fact. The first lies in that it was originally designed to be a boss monster, and with every boss comes an exploitable weakness that will ultimately prove to be its downfall. Based on the data, the Glitch possesses a limited HP, similar to what the Smashers acquire in Stamina mode. This is huge – it makes it very likely that the Death Glitch is not as invincible as it first seems, and that continuous application of brute violence may just be enough to destroy it.

The second weakness stems from the very nature of its existence. It is a Glitch, after all, and just like every other Glitch, it can be immediately be "fixed" with the singular usage of the force that has deleted even the most stubborn of Glitches. I am, of course, talking about

* * *

The rest continued on the next page, but Lucario did not have to turn the book to know what the writer was talking about. He spent several minutes, reading and re-reading all that he had read. When he finally tore his eyes away from the book and looked up, it was only to greet the grim, somber stares that awaited his reaction with a mixed expression of abject confusion and desolate understanding.

 **:)**


	15. Questions and Answers

His brain was crushed by an insurmountable amount of questions, an ever-expanding heap of the what's and why's and how's that pressed against the inner walls of his cranium and threatened to burst forth from his skull. He stood there, deaf, dumb, and blind, oblivious to all external happenings as he struggled with the massive headache that showed no signs of ever alleviating until he finally broke open the dam of welling questions and drowned the three Nintendirectors with the inner workings of his mind.

He went for the simplest one, in the end.

'Who wrote this?' he asked, though he was more than sure he already knew the answer.

"Master Hand," Link confirmed as he, too, walked over to the open book to read the text. "He always did have a deep understanding of the workings and intricacies of the universe – not surprising, considering he practically runs it…"

'So why not call him back then?' Lucario asked, a tinge of desperation sneaking into his voice as he directed his question at all three of the other minds present. 'Why isn't he here already? Doesn't he know when a Glitch has been released?'

"Master Hand doesn't automatically know when a Glitch rears its ugly head," Mario said simply as he threw himself back onto a brown sofa near the walls of the room. "He's very heavily involved in mining and interpreting the data of this world, sure, but he doesn't possess any form of magic that clues him in on when a Glitch has been activated." He took a quick drink out of a 1-Up Mushroom-shaped flask before continuing, "and we _have_ called Master Hand – or at least, tried to. We couldn't get through – wherever he and Crazy are, it's probably as late as where we are right now. "

"He might not be picking up on purpose," Samus pointed out disdainfully. "He did say he wanted nothing to do with the mansion until the next installment of Smash Bros. was on the horizon."

"There's nothing we can do about getting Master Hand's attention," Link frowned as he turned to Lucario with a very serious look. "More importantly, do you understand now why we trust you – and why you can trust us?"

'The former, yes,' Lucario replied confidently as he brought his paw down to the part of the book that specified the conditions required to unleash the Glitch of Death. 'I don't wear shoes.'

Link nodded as Mario added, "It's also the reason we could trust Greninja to go and fetch the boys. The requirements to unlock the Glitch, while limited to a quantity of two, are actually highly useful in qualifying who we can fully trust and who we need to be wary of. Greninja, like you, does not wear shoes. Before we sent her up, we gave her very specific instructions to fetch Toon Link first and have him accompany her in getting Yoshi. In this way, even if Yoshi happened to be the Glitch, he'd have to deal with twice the Smashers in order to claim even one of their lives. It's the golden rule of three coming into play again."

'Okay,' Lucario said slowly, nodding as the rationale behind certain decisions slowly started to reveal themselves. 'Okay,' he said again, trying to collect his thoughts on the second question which Link had asked him. He turned to the Hylian and began with the obvious. 'You're easy – Master Hand directly mentions your name in the list of impossible convicts –"

"Never thought I'd feel so grateful to the weird workings of this world," Link said, stretching a somewhat bitter smile as he began playing with his Zelda Amiibo again. "Well, if you trust that I'm not the Glitch, do you trust me when I say that Mario and I were working together the whole night, without ever leaving each other for the entire duration we were working, hence eliminating any possibility whatsoever that Mario is the one possessed by 07?"

Lucario mulled it over for a quick five seconds before nodding his head once again, noticing no flaw in the logic of Link's argument or the fallacy in placing faith by the words of someone who could never be the Glitch.

"I should thank Master Hand for oh-so conveniently ignoring all the back taxes the Smash Mansion's been accumulating over the years," Mario smiled grudgingly as he pointed to a litter of papers that showed scrawls and scrawls of numbers and calculations.

'Alright,' Lucario muttered, still wracking his brain for the final piece of the puzzle that was so successfully eluding him. When he still failed to come up with an answer, he turned, somewhat apologetically, to Samus, and directed, 'I'm still not convinced about you, though, Samus. If you weren't with Link for the entire night, then – what about you absolutely proves that you're not the Glitch?'

Much to Lucario's surprise, Samus only smirked, not even taking the slightest offence from the Pokémon's questioning doubt. "I'm disappointed in you, Lucario," she said tauntingly, taking Lucario by aback even further. "I thought you'd be able to figure it out immediately. Not as sharp as you make out to be, mmm?"

'But – I –' Lucario, flabbergasted and more than a little hurt in his pride, felt his ego fire up as he retaliated defensively, 'there's nothing in the book to suggest that you can't be a suspect. How do you expect me to know –'

"Oh, but there is," Samus smiled again, flashing that infuriating simper as she crossed her arms over her chest. "Read it again, and tell me if you realize something a little more… _Obscure_ this time."

Lucario frowned as he looked back down at the childish but perfectly legible, if not a bit too blocky, writings of Master Hand. His eyes sought the paragraph that detailed the two required conditions that had to be met in order to successfully activate the Glitch. He skimmed over the part stressing the two particular impossible identities of the conduit, and studied, slowly, the sentence that singularly saved him from the drowning pool of suspicion, the carelessly, sloppily written words that hoisted the innocence of several lives in the depths of its meaning. "Smasher must wear shoes… anyone who wears nothing on his feet… incapable of unlocking…" He squinted harder and backtracked, willing himself to focus not just on the words that guaranteed his safety. He tried again. "the Smasher must wear shoes that possess flat soles. Anyone in footwear that does not have flat soles…"

 _Flat soles_.

He immediately shifted his gaze over to the bottom of Samus's feet.

Not flat. Not directly parallel to the hard floor. At an angle, forty, forty-five, fifty degrees subtended from the ground.

'Heels,' Lucario said simply.

"Correct," Samus said, though she seemed to treat the emphasis of this redeeming evidence with begrudging contempt. "About damn time _Other M_ proves its worth beyond that of absolute garbage, but better late than never, I suppose."

"Which proves that Peach, too, can never be the Glitch," Mario interjected rather randomly and strongly.

"No, it doesn't," Link shot sharply back with equally strong conviction, much to Lucario's surprise.

"Link," Mario said as he hurled around to face the Hylian with a burning defiance that threatened to jump down the throats of all those that opposed, "she. Wears. Heels. She wears a-heels, Link! What more proof do you need?"

"You're not seriously saying that she wears those heels every second of her life, are you?"

"She was a-wearing them the whole day," Mario replied stubbornly.

"But how do you know, Mario? We can trust Samus because she was with us almost always yesterday, but you barely caught a glimpse of her for lunch! Is it really impossible to you, that maybe – just maybe – she may have changed into something far more comfortable to walk around in – something with flat soles, for instance?"

"Link, she is a-princess. Even away from the subjects of her kingdom she still has a certain decorum to maintain, a personal dresscode to abide by –!"

'Actually, I was wondering,' Lucario directed at Samus as he turned away from the argument that showed no signs of abating, 'did the three of you come up with any kind of list – lists – to show who can never be the Glitch, and who might be?'

"Oh yeah, of course," Samus said as she walked out from behind her table and went over to Mario's. She took the two topmost sheets of paper from the messy pile and presented it to Lucario with a flourish. The heading of one read "POSSIBLY"; the other read "DEFINITELY INNOCENT". Lucario scanned the latter list first, and, sure enough, spotted his name almost as soon as his eyes looked over the columns of names – "Lucario (no shoes)". The search had given his heart a quick surge of wild beating, as though in deluded anticipation that his name would be somehow absent from the list. With a slight sigh of relief Lucario gave a quick glance at the fellow names he shared his innocence with. Even among the limited selection there was a still a diversity of Smashers, and he read quickly the different accompanying reasons that followed in parenthesis after the name. R.O.B. "lacked feet". Wii Fit Trainer, like him, wore "no shoes". Palutena was "not in the Mansion". "Peach" seemed to have been written by a schizophrenic, capricious maniac, with her name written and immediately crossed-out several times, until finally the side preaching her innocence prevailed with a stubborn, sloppily-written "PEACH (HEELS)". Most interesting of all, however, was the name and reason directly below Lucario's, which incited a frown from the Aura Pokémon as he narrowed his eyes at the anomaly.

'What's up with Luigi?' Lucario asked as he pointed with his paw at the "(with Samus)" that followed the green plumber's name. 'How do you know he's "definitely innocent"? Does he not wear the correct shoes to activate the Glitch?'

"Ah, I forgot to tell you," Samus said as she threw back her head, sweeping the hair of her bangs from her eyes. "Well, we're honestly not a hundred percent sure about him, but we have very good reason to believe he's not possessed." Samus pointed at Shulk behind her with her thumb. "He and I were the ones to bring Shulk to Mario and first report Sonic's death."

'That's new,' Lucario said in surprise as he followed Samus's thumb and cast a quick glance towards the comatose body. He snapped his eyes back to Samus, still slightly unsettled by the descriptions of his injury. 'What happened?'

"Well, a big reason why he think he's innocent is that he's been gone for the past week, and only returned just a few hours ago. He was in the _Mario_ universe for the entire duration, as confirmed by E. Gadd, which means he definitely couldn't have activated the Glitch then. The only remaining possibility is that he's gone and unleashed the Glitch in the ten minutes he was here since his return, which is pretty much impossible. So…

"Anyway, I found him cowering like his usual self right outside the hall leading to the Atrium as I was going back to my room. He took the Clear Pipes from the Hangar, from the looks of it, and was just standing there, shaking and trembling and frozen to the spot. Got the spook of his life when I asked him what the hell he was doing." She smiled slightly in memory of what must have been a funny moment, before dropping the smirk and continuing, "He babbled to me about how he saw someone – or something – skirt back into the Resident Area just as he was coming out from the Clear Pipe, and heard strange noises coming from the Atrium. I dragged him in with me, and, well –" she motioned to Shulk again with a far grimmer expression this time – "what we saw wasn't particularly pretty."

'And he – he didn't do anything to you when it was just the two of you?' Lucario asked.

"That's a big part of why we think he isn't the Glitch," Samus said as she nodded. "Not that he could have done anything, even if he tried. Poor guy was freaking out and losing his shit the moment he saw Shulk lying facedown in his own pool of blood – and don't get me started on when he saw Sonic. We had to take turns to console him for nearly an hour, after that.

"There is a third person who comes into play in all this. While we going up to the offices here with Shulk, we ran into Lucina. She wanted to find me and these two idiots over here." Samus sighed as she looked behind; Mario and Link were still rambling on in continuation of the debate that they had had earlier that contested the true innocence of one of the involved party's lover. "Her room got broken into, and her sword's been stolen."

' _What_?' Lucario nearly yelped.

Samus nodded gravely. "Link and I checked it out after – after we brought up Sonic's body." She closed her eyes, whistled air through her nostrils as she breathed in, and continued. "Her room was a real mess. Window broken, slash marks everywhere… It was a nightmare. Seemed almost as though something flew or floated into her room through the window." She stooped over and pointed to Lucina's name on the list of potential Glitches. "You'll notice she's still in the "Possible" list. We don't think that's quite enough evidence to redeem her – if anything, it makes things all the more suspicious. For one thing, where was she when her room was being –" here Samus lifted up the index and middle fingers of both hands and formed imaginary quotation marks in the air "– "raided"? She claimed that she went back to find her Smash ID card, which is a bit too scarily coincidental – she loses her ID card on the night the Glitch is unleashed? Right. For all we know, she just might be the Glitch and all that mess might just all be a clever ruse to get us to be less suspicious of her identity by playing the victim card."

'You sound pretty convinced that Lucina's the Glitch,' Lucario muttered as he now read over the names on the list of Smashers that were all possible candidates for possession.

"I'm not convinced about anything – making rash assumptions and drawing ill-substantiated conclusions is the last thing we want to do here. But the circumstances don't exactly point in her favor, do they? Especially when you consider that Shulk's wound almost exactly fits that of the hole one would expect from a sword. Isn't that right, Mario?"

She turned to Mario, expecting to hear a reply of confirmation, but all that came from the plumber was a furrowed frown of annoyance and denial as Link cried, in a voice that could hardly qualify as apt for indoor use, "Are you kidding me?! You babble about _every_ thing to Peach! Do you think I forgot about that time when you promised not to tell anyone about the time I accidentally upskirted Zelda – _and you went and blurted everything to Peach who then blurted everything to Zelda and almost ruined my life forever_?!"

"Oh, knock if off, you two," Samus scoffed as she picked up a plastic file from Mario's desk and slapped each of them across the face with it.

Perhaps they had realized just how much their argument had deviated from its original purpose, or perhaps they had understood that now of all moments was not quite the time to be stuck in any debate whatsoever. In any case, the two Smashers simply huffed, both red in the face as they glared at each other for the longest time, before finally tearing their eyes looking resolutely away.

In the silence Lucario finished the "Possible" list, which detailed extensively the Smashers from Captain Falcon and Dark Pit to Yoshi and Zelda. A nagging thought had been growing inside him as he read through the list, a thought that had planted its seed right as Samus had confirmed that they had indeed compiled lists of the surely innocent and potentially guilty. Being lost in his own analysis of all that had transpired, however, as well as the sudden, uncomfortable silence of the room now that it had been purged of all tension, were food enough for that thought to develop, present itself more clearly, and he finally threw it out from the confines of his mind for all to hear and attack and pick apart.

'Why don't we – why don't you guys just let these Smashers go?' Lucario held up the list of "Definitely Innocent" and shook it slightly. 'Either allow them to make their departure from the mansion, or just – keep them separated from the ones who might be the Glitch? Isn't it safer that way?'

"We thought about that," Link spoke up first as he wiped the sweat from his brow with his sleeve. "Didn't sound like a bad idea at first. We'd probably be saving a lot of lives that way, getting rid of all risks of those who are clearly innocent from losing their lives, and slowly try to isolate the Glitch from the remaining Smashers, which would be a lot easier to keep a close eye on when they're a lot smaller in number."

"The thing is," Mario continued for Link as the color of his usual skin tone returning to his face, "it's pretty shady to those who we say has to remain behind, the Glitch in particular, when we start showing special treatment to certain others for no explicable reason and allow them to leave the mansion. We don't want the Glitch to know that _we_ know certain things about… It. We want the Glitch to think that we know nothing, to lull it into a false sense of security, to make it think that it has all the time in the world to go around and pick off people one by one as we struggle to ascertain who the hell among us it could be. That's what makes the three-people rule safe, for now. Imagine what would happen instead, if we progressively made the group smaller and smaller and gave it less and less Smashers to potentially kill off."

"It'd probably fly into a state of panicked rage," Samus finished. "Remember what Master Hand wrote – the Glitch only lives to kill. It lives for literally nothing else. If we start dwindling the number of Smashers left in the mansion, if the Glitch ever thinks that at one point we know too much and might find out its identity soon – well, it'd probably stop hiding and just go into a killing rampage. Better to be eradicated from this world after claiming a few lives, instead of just meekly hiding away and not having murdered a single soul when it's finally discovered and patched away."

"We might be protecting those who are definitely innocent, but we'd be putting those who might be the Glitch but aren't at a huge risk," Link concluded.

Lucario nodded. What they said not only made perfect sense, it displayed a depth of strategic planning unrivalled by any other that offered critical insight into all the possibilities, all the consequences of what certain actions could incur. The questions were dying, one by one, plucked away and stifled from existence as the soothing answers from Mario, Link, and Samus freed his brain from their parasitic presence. Only two remained now, the first of which Lucario wasted no time to ask next.

'And Kirby – or King Dedede or Meta Knight – they don't know of this? At all?'

"Not according to Master Hand, no," Samus sighed. She flashed another one of those bitter smiles as she added, "Hard to believe, isn't it? That something so dark and fucked-up could ever draw its origins from one of the most innocent and child-friendly universes to ever exist?"

"Sakurai's always loved his contrasting juxtapositions," Link pointed out, rather broodingly and darkly.

'Yes, well…' He struggled for a while, but finding no additional input to say on the matter, Lucario finally turned to the last question. He signaled to the part of the book he was talking about with his paw, and, in a voice stronger and more confident than that which he used to ask all the other questions, asked, almost asserted, 'what Master Hand's talking about to fix the Glitch – is it what I think it is?'

"Maybe," Mario said. "What do you think it is?"

'What you pointed at Bowser just now,' Lucario replied, as though answering a question he had already heard many times before.

Mario nodded as he walked over, slowly, to his table. He reached his hand into his back pockets and took out the revolver. It captivated all eyes to itself as it rested on Mario's table, sitting coldly with the square eye of its muzzle staring into Lucario's own, streaks of white-hot light dancing around in pulsing lines etched upon its rectangular barrel and grip, begging all to squeeze down on its trigger to release the destructive energy that it so painfully emanated.

In a constrained whisper, Mario duly announced its presence.

"The Patch Gun."


	16. Drowning Body

_Yoshi…_

The tiniest blip in the radar of infinite darkness, made tangible by the intangibility of everything else. In the tarnished haze of obscurity, it vanishes as soon as it appears, cast in the evanescence of a transcendental state of existence that remains eclipsed to the unblind.

 _Yoshi…_

You are but a drowning body in the drowning body that sinks eternally within you. Time and space hold no meaning when you're drowning. Your only dimensions of reference are black, black, black. It pulls you in, in, in. Into the black. Into the dark. Into the abyss.

 _Yoshi…_

But the darkness bleeds now, from minute pores and cuts that grow ever wider. Small rifts are opening, the continuum crackles with self-destruction. Amorphous tentacles of white light crawl forth and wrap gently around the essence called "you". They soothe, they heal, they calm. They are your guidance, they are your saviors. They want nothing more than to bring you up to the surface.

 _Yoshi…_

Won't you listen to them…?

Yoshi…!

 _But I don't want to leave._

Yoshi…!

 _I want to stay. I want to stay here forever._

Yoshi…!

 _If I go out there, I'll die._

Yoshi…!

 _Ha…_

Yoshi…!

 _No. That's not true._

Yoshi…!

 _I'll be alive again out there. But I want to die._

Yoshi…!

 _I want to stay here forever._

Yoshi…!

 _But that's impossible, isn't it?_

Yoshi!

 _Illusions don't last forever._

* * *

"YOSHI!"

His eyes opened.

The world did not return slowly. Reality greeted him with a hard slap to each and every one of his senses. He saw the chest and the empty bag wherein the shattered remains of his egg lay. He felt the searing cold of the external chill blasting into the room from the open window. He moved with intense oscillations in waves of body-rocking motion that were not a product of his own.

He looked up.

It was a true testament to his cognitive functions that he was able to understand everything that was happening in less than a second. He recognized Luigi and read the anger and shock and confusion etching the features of his face. He knew, too, why he was subjected to the physical repercussions of such emotions, that he was wrongly and unjustly in Luigi's room without the owner's consent. He guessed, correctly, that he must have lapsed into the psychological blackhole in the recesses of his mind, long enough for Luigi to have caught up with him and find the pod of his abandoned body sitting encroachingly in a messy clutter of personal belongings.

All this he understood within the second he awoke.

"What," Luigi was saying, almost in a wail of distress, and Yoshi noted just how wildly the sound waves bounced about in his skull, "are you doing? My room!" Luigi's eyes darted around the general perimeter of the chest, breath growing ever heavier as he looked at each belonging Yoshi had carelessly strewn about. "My table!" he cried again, and he bounded forward immediately, shoveling the mound of slushy snow out the window with one, two, three handfuls, before leaning forward and closing the window.

Yoshi simply looked up at Luigi, not saying or doing anything else.

"Is this some kind of joke?" Luigi quivered as he looked down at the unresponsive dinosaur, his entire body shaking with mixed emotions and a living contrast to the unmoving being before him. "Is this funny to you? How did you get in here? What – I don't – _what are you doing here_?"

Yoshi did not respond. His larynx remained cold and still, his tongue remained heavy and dull. The neurons of his brain, at once hyperventilating and tranquil, made lightning connections to the points bridging analysis and deductive reasoning. The culprit behind the case of the missing apple, the suspicious resident who was supposed to be away for a week longer, the murderer who now roamed free within the suffocating cage of the mansion – to know one was to know all, and it was this frightening, screaming conclusion that swallowed the voice of Yoshi eternally within the grottos of his throat.

He stared at Luigi with eyes that seemed as if they could sink back into their sockets from the horror that was piercing them.

"Well?" Luigi thundered again, the first signs of frustrated anger biting into his vocal cords.

Behind him he could hear the shuffling of feet. Yoshi tore his eyes away and looked behind. By the doorway were some of the Smashers who lived on the L, M, N, O, P floor. They remained mostly silent, looking inquisitively into the room and sudden conflict, occasionally letting a wisp of murmurs escape their lips – Peach was practically stuffing her entire upper body through the doorway, greedily absorbing all with her eyes and ears as her nosy personality dictated that she see and hear all even in such dire times.

There was a sudden parting of the Smashers, and then Ness and Toon Link popped into view, both panting and red in the face as they stumbled into Luigi's room.

"Yoshi –" Toon Link stopped, leaned one hand against the wall, puffed up his lungs with the oxygen he had clearly drained his body of in attempting to catch up with Yoshi. "You – you got the bomb?" He paused again, took another deep breath, and continued, "OK, OK – good, you threw it out the window –"

"Sorry, ladies and gentlemen – and Luigi." Ness turned to address the green plumber, who was starting to look even more pathetic with each passing second. "We – we set up a prank for you, involving a bomb that would go off when you returned –"

"We thought it might be too dangerous, though, with what's going on right now," Toon Link explained after a final gulp of air. "When we saw you were already back, we knew we had to act – fast."

"Lucky Yoshi here's quite the runner," Ness chuckled as he stepped forth and clasped a hand on Yoshi's shoulder. "We're really sorry about this, Luigi – we didn't mean to surprise you or anything. But we had to deactivate the bomb before you got to your room. For your own safety."

The pooled confusion that massed from the crowd began to dissipate rapidly, and the biggest source of the pollution eased the muscles of his face and loosened the stance of his body as he sputtered, "So, it – it was all just a prank?"

"It was a de-prank of the prank," Toon Link corrected as he, too, stepped forward. He and Ness gently pulled Yoshi up to his feet, who even throughout the commotion remained as petrified as ever. Luigi watched as the trio of would-be pranksters, and a slight frown reappeared on his face as quite suddenly, yet another unanswered fact hit his now-stable state.

"Wait a minute!" he cried again. "How did you even manage to get into my room, in the first place?"

Ness scoffed. "Here's a dainty piece of advice for you," he said, shaking his head condescendingly as he turned again to Luigi. "If you're going to set an unbreakable code for anything, make sure it's not the year that celebrates whatever anniversary you're having." He flashed a grin as Luigi's frown quickly upset itself into that of dawning horror. "It's as easily predictable as setting it as your birthday or something, don't you think?"

Luigi opened his mouth, let out a croak that evolved into nothing, and promptly shut his mouth again. The internal struggle of what to say affected his body palpably, as he seemed to shake and writhe with the right words to loosen his tongue. Finally, he turned slightly, fixing a cold, resolute gaze that just so happened to meet with Yoshi's linear stare that had been affixed upon him for the entire duration of the confrontation.

What he said next would finally instill life into Yoshi as he would shudder, shiver, from the pernicious intent behind the words, which, he knew all too well, was there for sure.

"Just – get out of my room, all of you. And Yoshi, if you ever mess with me ever again – I swear, you'll pay for it. You hear me? You'll pay for it with your life."

Outside, as the members of the crowd slowly returned to their rooms, Lucas stood still, watching intently the backs of his three friends, arms held oddly stiff by his sides.

* * *

Despite all rational reasoning telling him that to move would be pure silliness, Lucario couldn't help but shift his body slightly to the left. His brain, of course, tried to convince itself by repeating that there was nothing to fear, that even if the Patch Gun pointed directly at his heart there was no danger of it acquiring a mind of its own and blast its quantum ray (that defined neither life nor death) into his chest. His feet, however, operated independently of their master at such instances, and it didn't take much for them to win the battle and move him away from the direction of the Patch Gun's impaling stare. The white-hot light continued to sweep throughout its body in bursts of ephemeral pulses, crackling with a mad, barely-contained sort of electricity that threatened to zap forth any second now and subject all to its devastating properties.

There was a drought of silence, broken only by the occasional tapping of shoes and clearing of throats.

'How many shots in one gun?' Lucario finally asked.

"Two," Mario answered simply. He rested a hand against the grip of the gun, and the mere act of touch almost seemed to invigorate it – when he lifted his hand off, it seemed to almost float off the table, desperate for touch and the affection of external energy. "Any more than that and the gun will explode. It just can't contain that much Patch."

Lucario continued to look down at the revolver. Technology, he decided there and then, was one of the most amazing things to observe in its progress and development. He remembered, back in the Brawl days when he first joined, when the only solution to eradicating any Glitch was a Patch Grenade. He had watched a live demonstration when Jigglypuff Puffed-Up and remained stuck as a massive, spherical blob of pink and air. Master Hand had isolated the poor, confused Pokémon, warned all watchers to stand back, and pulled the pin before throwing it. The grenade had traveled in a high arc and smacked the giant Jigglypuff squarely in between her eyes.

The explosion was unlike anything Lucario had ever seen before: A chaotic eruption of squares and rectangles, each varying wildly from the other in its dimensions, of a white so brilliant and incandescent that it could blind and melt eyes. The blast had stretched what must have easily been a mile in its radius, engulfing Jigglypuff entirely and turning circle into a myriad of quadrilaterals. The ear-splitting boom one would expect was instead replaced by high-pitched whines and crackles of magical electricity, and the duration, too, was atypical of that of other explosions of such magnitude: Three quick seconds and everything was over. The squares and the rectangles vaporized instantly into nothing, leaving a slightly miffed, but otherwise perfectly fine Jigglypuff in all her original size and glory.

That was about seven years ago. Technology had evolved at an exponential rate, accelerating in age and advancement faster than any of the Smashers, and before he knew it Master Hand was flaunting guns instead of grenades as he ran around the mansion, fixing whatever Glitch next reared its ugly head. The linear trajectory at which the gun fired its Patches could only be a good thing, for it greatly reduced the risk of ever catching any non-Glitch into its blast zone.

The punishment of subjecting a non-Glitch to a Patch was eternal deletion of its existence.

It didn't matter if it was impossible for the Patch Gun to suddenly fire its content without anyone manipulating its trigger. It was just as destructive as it was healing, and common instinct dictated that he be not directly in front of where it was currently pointing.

'Then – how many guns do you have?' was the next logical question.

"Seven," Samus answered, pointing to her head to a small, metallic vault along the foot of the wall behind Mario's desk. "Which, depending on whether or not the Glitch kills its host upon inhabiting him, means we can only afford to let eleven to twelve more people die."

'Huh?' Lucario let out.

"Oh, you didn't read the next page, did you? Go over there and read on."

He nodded, walked over to Samus's table, where the book lied open from where he last left off.

* * *

I am, of course, talking about

* * *

He turned the page.

* * *

Patches, the current form of which takes on that of a gun. I highly doubt anyone other than I (and maybe Crazy) will ever read this, but to any potential reader who is unfortunate enough to not be me, I apologize for using precious space in this paper to once again praise my ability to strategize and plan well ahead into the future. To explain briefly, the trigger of the current design of the Patch Gun is made of the same material with which I made the pin of the previous Patch Grenades, a rare, expensive form of metal imbued with concentrated doses of Patch that outright denies the Glitch from pressing down on the trigger and firing the Gun. Should the Glitch of Death ever be unleashed, then, and take on the form of a seemingly innocent Smasher – even if it manages to get a hold on any of the Patch Guns, it will never, ever be able to use it for its own annihilating ways. It will have no choice but to resort to its lowly Glitchy ways to secure its kills.

I can't confirm whether or not the Glitch kills the Smasher it intends to possess before actually claiming his or her body for its own, but even if it does, this Smasher, along with all else that the Glitch has killed, can still be brought back to life with the use of the Patches. The results of the Musket Experiment back in '04 show that lost souls will cling to the realm of the living as long as there exists a Patch that can offer it back its corporeal form. Should the number of Patches be drained to zero, then any remaining soul will automatically be released from its reprieve and disappear into wherever the path of death leads them, of which, of course, I have no information.

A final point: To state that the release of the Glitch will bring complete and utter chaos to not only the Smash Mansion, but to the entire Smash Universe as we know it, is an understatement, and a huge one at that. Blood spilling everywhere as the fellow non-Smashers we inhabit this Universe with experience the true pain of breaking bones and losing limbs. Desperate attempts to flee the Universe, perhaps, as careless complacency ceases to be tolerated, crumbling the very stability of all things political, economic, and social. The consequences, when extrapolated to such a macroscopic scale, are unthinkable, to say the least. But I bring good news: Certain secondary conditions still exist, such that the Glitch cannot pull off any of its world-breaking murderous ways on any non-Smasher. Smashers still remain susceptible, but safety is guaranteed, until the conditions are met, for those that do not fight for the Smash Bros. name. Unfortunately, the good news end there, for I have insufficient data to ascertain what exactly these conditions are that the Glitch must fulfil before it can murder the non-Smashers – but it is, at the very least, better than nothing.

All in all, the overall danger of the Glitch of Death is directly proportional to the number of Patches that exist at the time the Glitch is active in the Smash Universe. Even if the Glitch kills and absorbs the souls of many, possessing an equal number of Patches should be enough to bring these souls right back. Actually, scratch that – I forgot to mention that there needs to be at least one more Patch than the number of souls the Glitch claims, for according to the limited data we mined, the body of the Glitch must first be broken down by a Patch before it can be properly exterminated. It's a bit of a guess, but extrapolating the numbers, hitting it with the first Patch will force it to eject all souls it had managed to absorb and leave it exposed to be exterminated, once and for all – be that through yet another Patch or through the application of brute violence. In other words, if the Glitch of Death kills _x_ people, then we'll need at least _x_ +1 Patches in order to eradicate the Glitch of Death through the use of brute violence, and _x_ +2 if we intend to finish it off with yet another Patch (which will surely be the more convenient option of the two).

Holy shit this was a lot to write. I can't believe I wasted so much time just writing about a Glitch that'll probably never appear in the first place. I mean, what are the odds? Probably one in several billions. Shit, I'm exhausted. I think I'll take a vacation.

* * *

It ended there, and Lucario couldn't help but smirk at the dark irony of the last few words as he once again looked up. He wiped it away quickly, however, as Link said out loud, "Done?"

'Yes.' He looked back down at the pages again, ascertaining the meaning of particular words, before looking back up and asking, 'So – Sonic's not dead forever then? He – he can still be brought back to life?'

"Seems like it." Link scratched his chin as he walked over to the sofa along the walls and removed his scabbard from his back. "It's Master Hand, so the data he's got is reliable. He's been predicting Glitches and identifying their exact conditions and effects years before they even occur." Setting the Master Sword gently against the wall, he lied down comfortably on the sofa, allowing himself to sag into the plush.

"We did the math," Samus brought up as she closed the book; the two sides slammed shut with a _thwump_ and a miniature, yet violent shockwave of air. "We have seven Patch Guns, each containing two Patches, which means we have a total of fourteen Patches right now. We need one Patch to break down the Glitch into its weakened state. We need another Patch to bring Sonic back to life. That means we can afford to lose twelve more Smashers, at most, before we're going to have to start making sacrifices and make the ethical decisions of who gets to live on. And that number decreases to eleven if the Glitch does actually kill its host before taking over him, since we'll need a Patch for the host, too. And if we want a quick and easy way to kill that son of a bitch Glitch? We're all the way down to ten, baby."

"To make matters worse, this is _assuming_ that what Master Hand said about the Glitch ejecting the souls once it's been hit by the first Patch is true," Mario added on from Shulk's bedside, checking that all values were normal. "He did mention that he wasn't particularly sure of that particular data. For all we know, the number of Smashers we can actually afford to lose might be well below ten."

There was silence again, after that. Lucario did not like the emphasis in which Mario said "assuming", but there was nothing else that he could offer to comment on the matter. As it was, his head was already crammed with all the new information, and if knowledge was made of actual substance his brain would be oozing from his ears from all that he had hoarded and stuffed into his skull. Whatever energy and investment he needed to voice out doubts, questions, remarks, were instead channeled towards strengthening his mental fortitude and grasping all that he had learned within the packed hour.

"Well, if no one else has anything to say, I think we're done," Mario finally said as he looked up from Shulk's bed.

"Your brain must be feeling pretty fried right now," Samus smiled, not unkindly as she placed a warm hand on the Aura Pokémon's shoulder and gave a quick squeeze. "I think it's best if you get some sleep now."

'That does sound ideal,' Lucario muttered, and let out an internal groan as he thought about the long walk from the office to his room all the way in the Eastern Wing. Link seemed to have read his mind, however, for he turned to Lucario from the sofa and said, "Don't worry – you can take the portal that leads to my room. Here –"

He got up, strode over to a door behind his desk, and opened it, revealing a small alcove a room with a singular inhabitant of a two-dimensional Twilight Portal. The lines of green flashed and pulsed like the white ones on the Patch Gun, though in a much more gentler, serene fashion as it adorned the circumference of the circle that emanated a drifting haze of turquoise.

"Specially engineered so that Midna doesn't have to be here," Link explained somewhat cheerfully as he opened the door wide in invitation for Lucario. "It leads directly to my room, which is pretty close to yours, so step right on in."

'Thank you,' Lucario said gratefully as he walked forward to where Link was. He stopped in front of the doorway and turned to address both Mario and Samus, who seemed to be preparing themselves to step into their own respective portals in the room behind their desks. 'And thank you all for – for trusting me enough, and telling me all this.'

"Thank _you_ , Lucario, for agreeing to be part of our team," Mario replied quite seriously as his eyes locked into Lucario's. "I'm not exaggerating when I say that our chances of defeating the Glitch and saving many lives has increased tenfold with your Aura by our side. Stay on your toes and always remember to stick around with at least two other Smashers, alright? That goes to the two of you, too."

Even during this time of hardship, even during this period of morbid helplessness, the balloon that never truly went flaccid inflated greatly within Lucario's chest, and despite the stress of the responsibility, despite the burden of the truth, Lucario felt a warm rush of immeasurable pleasure pump through his veins and inundate his already-overwhelmed brain with waves of the dopamine that came whenever his pride was appeased to a dangerous state of vanity and arrogance – so much so, in fact, that he failed to register that Link was talking to him, at first, as he felt himself squeeze through the channels of time and space.

"Lucario, this isn't really related to anything we've been talking about, but – you haven't seen my Gale Boomerang around anywhere, have you?"

'I beg your pardon?'

"My Gale Boomerang. You know, the one I have as my Side Special? I lost it."

'I don't recall seeing it anywhere, no. I'm sorry.'

"Dammit. Crap. Well, wherever it is, I just hope it's not in the slimy hands of that wretched Glitch."


	17. Autopsies and Personalities

Sonic's body lied on its metal bed. The tubes that poked into his arm pumped saline and preservers into his body, regulating temperature and texture. His entire abdomen was shaved of its cream-colored fur, revealing naked, light-brown skin underneath. With quick, masterful strokes of the surgeon's tools, the brown was gashed with incisions that spelled a Y, its celebrating arms reaching forth to touch the skies of Sonic's shoulder, its stick body fissuring the land spanning his chest to his crotch into two. Then the brown was pulled back like organic flaps of rubber, exposing the treasure of rich, dark-red meat, splotched by occasional lines of white and sticky, bright-yellow fats. It was molested with the presses of the thumbs and fingers and jabs of the cold, unfeeling knife, before gloved hands dug deep and shifted the meat around, pulling out a gloopy spaghetti of intestines, slicing through tendons and sinews of the internal muscles to yank off sections of the chest.

They moved onto the head, after that.

"So, Olimar," Mario said after an intense two hours of cutting, pulling, tearing, and analyzing of the cadaver and its separated head. He turned to his partner as he closed the large, metal door to the vault in which they kept Sonic's body, unfastening the clasp of his gown as he did so. "What did you think? Got anything that I missed?"

Olimar looked up from the HocotatePad and said, in his deep, surly voice that was rather unfitting of his tiny stature, "I'd just like to reinstate, Mario, that compared to yours my knowledge in the field of medicine remain lacking and pitiful. I have indeed managed to gain valuable insight into the anatomies and biological workings of the species I have encountered native to the future of your world, but such "studies", if I even allow myself the honor of calling them that, were done almost as a recreational pastime, in the nights when the Hocotate Ship would take cover in the shelter of the stars and provide for me a brilliant wealth of dead bodies that the Pikmin loyally brought back in many of our dungeon spelunking. Certainly what I have to say next –"

"I understand," Mario cut across hurriedly as he stuffed the gown into the garbage can and proceeded to do the same with his gloves, "but I still think whatever you have to say is better than nothing. So, do you agree with me that cause of death is definitely decapitation?"

"Most certainly," Olimar said as he looked down at the HocotatePad, cheeks slightly burning at the not-so-tactful interruption that insinuated his annoying tendency to speak in wordy tangents. "As you have pointed out, the hemorrhages present in the subendocardinal regions and the aspiration of blood, proven by the clots lining the walls of the windpipe and the corresponding respiratory changes of the lungs, all point to evidence that Sonic was very well and alive before the decapitation. The smell wafting from the destroyed nose and mouth carried a faint trace of alcohol, but as the results of the postmortem explain, Sonic was almost certainly not killed from alcohol poisoning, though the consumption of it may have somewhat contributed to his demise, whether that be inability to fight or ignorance to whatever danger was surrounding him."

"It was obvious, but it had to be done," Mario sighed as he ran his hands under the sink. "Well, thanks for sticking with me through the autopsy, Olimar. Been years since I've actually done one – never needed anything I learned as a doctor here right until now."

"Wait," Olimar said as Mario reached for the doorknob. He held it there as he turned to the small spaceman. "There's something else – something we realized, but the meaning of which may have escaped the two of us, and which has only hit me now after looking through the photos."

"I'm listening."

"Well, we've already noted the presence of multiple sharp force trauma to Sonic's neck, implying that it was the work of a sword or a knife or something similar that severed his head off." Olimar held up the HocotatePad, swiping through high-definition photos of both the stump of Sonic's neck and the detached head, taken at various angles (one even showed the head with its stump pointing vertically upward). "What is confusing to me, however, is that there were _multiple_ sharp force trauma in the first place. If the murderer was as skilled as he seems to be with his weapon of choice, then surely a quick slash would be enough to separate the head from the body? This is especially true for swords, of which many use in this mansion as their primary style of fighting." He paused to let the meaning of his words sink in, as Mario's lower lip traveled lower and lower down his chin. "It just seems so strange to me. If the Glitch took over the body of a swordsman, then surely his skills would have transmuted over to his killing intent."

"Mama mia, Olimar," Mario whispered, in a stupefied, shaking hush as he took the HocotatePad from Olimar and studied the pictures for himself. He was silent for about twenty seconds, studying the various close-ups of Sonic's neck and head before turning back to Olimar, a sparkle of excited discovery twinkling in each eye. "You're-a right. How could I have missed out something so a-obvious? Mama mia…" He looked down at the screen one more time before looking at Olimar again, this time with a wide smile splitting his cheeks. "You see? What did I tell you? What-a are you talking about, saying you are-a useless? You just brought us several steps closer to hunting down the Glitch!"

"Well…" Olimar trailed off with his reply, the red on his cheeks now that of a healthy blush as Mario shook him enthusiastically by the shoulder. "Oh, it was nothing. I'm sure you would have figured it out, too. Eventually."

Mouth opening to assure the modest spaceman that no, he probably wouldn't have, Mario led Olimar out of the Surgery Room, out into the waiting area where Link was waiting on the couch, having "noped" the fuck out of there after one look at Sonic's dead body.

* * *

"I'm still surprised you even trusted Olimar," were the first words to come out of Link's mouth as soon as they were alone in Mario's room again.

"For the last time, Link," Mario sighed as he closed the door behind him, squeezing, strictly out of habit, a 1-Up Mushroom doll that he kept hanging by the door; it gave the classic chime, brief background music to his next words: "Oxygen is poisonous to him. The poor man can't take a single step outside without his spacesuit on. Do you really think he'd be able to scarf an apple down without suffocating? Last time we dared him to take off his space helmet, he was out cold for two hours before showing even the faintest trace of life. What makes you think he'd be able to ingest the apple without fainting first?"

"He could have taken off the helmet, swallow the apple whole, and put it back on again," Link said stubbornly.

"Be realistic, won't you? And space suits don't work that way." He yawned as he sat down on his bed, the sheets of which were adorned by various pixelated sprites of several items and creatures in the Mushroom Kingdom – Fire Flowers, Paratroopas, 8-bit Toads. "More importantly, though – I have a question." He looked at Link with a somewhat sheepish expression as he struggled to let the words escape his lips. "You don't – well, with-a how real injuries are now, what do you think of… S-s-a-sex? With a-woman?"

"You're the doctor here," Link replied, taken slightly aback by the drastic shift in topic of their discussion. "And besides, I wouldn't know. I'm gay."

"You never told me that," Mario uttered in surprise.

Link shrugged. "You never asked."

(Somewhere far away, the hopes and dreams of a billion fanfiction writers were crushed as they screamed and smashed their keyboards against their computers, while a billion other fanfiction writers rejoiced with tears streaming down their faces.)

"Getting a little naughty here, are we?" Link grinned slyly as he sat down next to Mario and poked him, playfully but painfully, in the ribs. "Thinking of giving little Mario a nice exercise in Peach's moist, warm garden, are we now?"

"A-shut up," Mario snarled, face reddening to the similar shade boasted by his cap.

"Ah, the wants of a sexually active man. Even in this dark and foreboding times a man would rather think with the head between his legs than the one resting on his shoulders. Well, I won't judge you for it, Mario, but –"

"Get-a outuv here! A-Now!"

* * *

The individual state of each and every Smasher after the night of the distressing news of Sonic's death and an unleashed, psychopathic Glitch could best be described on a scale that ranged between the extreme values of "shattering sadness" and "healthy fear for one's own life". Those who knew Sonic well, were acquainted with the hedgehog close enough to associate themselves as his friend, probably lied somewhere close to the middle of the scale. They kept their heads down, talking in strained whispers, some still puffy and red-eyed from the deluge of tears released just hours before. The same could be said to a far smaller extent to the friends of Shulk, though Mario's promise that he would be soon among the living invigorated their hopes significantly more. Those who did not ever get to know Sonic were closer to the latter value. They made sure to abide by the rule of three, often hanging around in groups of six or seven. They darted their eyes constantly. They ran short of topics to discuss and often dissolved into their own rooms, the only place where the Smashers ever felt truly safe and solitary.

There was a marked change in behavior as well, and every step was tread with careful precision, every room visited with apprehensive deliberation. Heights, knives, fire, all instantly became causes of fatal dangers and were avoided if it could be helped. Time, too, seemed to slow to a crawl, and the hands on the clock could never count down the day any slower as monotony and boredom reigned supreme in the new lifestyle of the Smash Mansion.

There were two notable exceptions to all this. The first came in Lucario. He seemed to strut, not walk, now, and from his entire body exuded a thick air of superiority. He closed his eyes, spoke with exaggerated sighs. His chest puffed up as much as the entire body of Jigglypuff when curious Smashers asked him what the Nintendirectors had called him for. He didn't give answers, which was somewhat understandable, but what wasn't the almost-disdainful way in which he replied, the cryptic undertones of whatever he said that was specifically tailored to whoever he was talking to.

"What deed zey want wiss you?" Greninja asked.

'I can't tell you. But there's a reason why I'm the only one they feel confident enough to confide in me certain… Secrets, and absolutely no one else.'

He said this in a maddeningly gloating way that tried even the honed stability of a graceful wat- _air_ _neen_ ja's temper.

"Zere must be somezing zey said you can tell," Greninja insisted, struggling to keep her tone from betraying how offended she was.

'Nothing, my watery, amphibious friend. But I'll let you know this – you have nothing to worry about us ever questioning your innocence. We know you're not the one. That's all I can tell you – ask me nothing else!'

The assurance of her innocence, somehow, left an even more bitter taste on her tongue than before.

On a separate occasion, it was Marth, Ike, and Robin who approached him after they knocked on his door.

"We were just wondering, Lucario," Robin said in a false tone of a cheery front, "whether you could tell us anything about what happened to Lucina's Falchion? Maybe other things, too, if you're at the leisure to disclose them, but primarily any news about the Parallel Falchion, if you please. Lucina is greatly distressed, and if you could just shed some light on the matter, I'm sure it'll cheer – well, it can't make her feel any worse than she is now."

Lucario furrowed his brow, glared down at the feet of the three swordsmen. They awaited a response, trying not to let their eagerness show as they waited for his deep voice to boom in their minds. Boom it did, when he looked back up and met Robin's gaze with a cold one of his own. He said, 'I have nothing to say to any of you. Please, be gone.'

He turned up his snout as if avoiding a particularly rancid odor and closed the door on their faces before he could see the expectations turn to that of crestfallen, offended disappointment.

The Smashers mostly avoided him after that. If there were ever conversations, he was dragged into the mud of it, his name attacked by vile tongues that spoke of the richness of his brand new attitude, how his characteristic pride that was at least slightly charming and moderately endurable before had now been boosted to that only found in smug prima donnas.

Lucario didn't care. As far as he was concerned, all that they exhibited was an affronted, immature bout of jealousy. He was already used to being shunned for his awkwardness in socializing, so why did it matter if he was now being cast aside for whatever noble reason they dreamed up of? They would all get what they deserve in due time, anyway. He would watch over them, turn a blind eye to all the petty hate, cast all under the protection of his Aura, and when they realized it they would come crawling to him, groveling, crying for forgiveness, and he would forgive them to prove a point – that he was the better Smasher, throughout it all. He would be one of the principal runners in defeating the Glitch, perhaps even be the one to deliver the finishing shot. He let his mind wander into worlds dominated by heroic visions of his own figure, standing tall, proud, alone, exhausted but victorious, among burning debris and fallen bodies, an unidentifiable blackness dissolving into nothing before the steaming gun held in his paws. No, no – he would need no Patch to end the Glitch. He would do it with the strength of his own Aura, he would smash his fists repeatedly into the ugly monster until it was practically begging for his mercy along with the rest of the ingrates. Yes, yes, that's what would happen – he would become a hero. He would be liked by all. No one would ignore him, ever again.

* * *

The other exception was Yoshi. From any outsider's point of view, it seemed as if he was simply stricken by the same prodigious fear that burrowed under the skin of everyone and made them shudder, talk in stinted gasps. But anyone who managed to teleport himself into his mental world would be immediately drowned by the raging tsunamis of regret, guilt, paranoia that took their turn to crash down, repeatedly, on his battered, flaking brain. Often he sat still, thinking of nothing but the few existing constants that his thoughts now revolved feebly around, all of them dark, brooding, morbid, depressing.

 _You're the one. You're the one who released the Glitch. That means you're the one who killed Sonic, and injured Shulk. Let that sink in. You're the one who killed Sonic. You killed Sonic. You have blood on your hands. You're a murderer now. Do you get it? No one will ever like you, ever again. You'll go down in history as a total, complete failure. You'll be remembered forever as a murderer. How are you still alive? How can you live with this guilt? You deserve to die. You coward. You haven't even told anyone yet. You're the one who's murdered Sonic. You want to stop this, more than anyone else. And yet you refuse to come forth and tell anyone what you did. Information that could help in finding out the Glitch, and stop any more lives from being lost. Why aren't you telling anyone? Why aren't you admitting to your sins? You coward. You know why. You're not saying anything because they won't like you anymore if you told them. So is that more important to you now? Your desire to be loved, more than saving the lives in danger? Wow. You really are a selfish coward. You disgust me. Well, it doesn't matter anyway. They'll find out eventually. You'll be exposed for what you are, even if you don't tell them. You murderer. How can you live with this guilt? How can you – how can you –_

 _How can I live with this guilt? I'm such a coward. I'm a dirty coward and a dirty murderer and a coward. I killed Sonic. I'll kill even more people, if I don't tell anyone. I'm scared. I'm so scared. Shit, fuck, shit. I'm a murderer. I'm – why didn't I just stick with Lucario and buy the things like I was supposed to? Why did I run off? Why did you do it? Why did I do it? Why, why, why? Why didn't I bring the apple to immediate attention the moment I brought it out? Why didn't you do it? Why didn't I do it? Ah… Ah._

 _I need to tell them. I need to tell them about Luigi. I'm the only who knows, because I'm the one who infected him with it. It's all your fault. It's all my fault. You… I need to tell them, now, that it's Luigi. But I know I won't. I won't because I'm a coward, I'm a murderer, I'm a –_

"Yoshi!"

He snapped out of it and remembered where he was: In Ness's room. The iSaturn was playing its music yet again, and Yoshi heard the thunderous pounding of drums, the jarring noise of power guitars, the panicked plinks of a piano, the repetitive monotony of two distinct voices, one declaring, "Introducing the band", the other announcing something that sounded like "dyenum".

They were sitting on the giant, rectangular carpet that was a cloth representation of the city of Onett, stitched lovingly with every detail, from the sloping hills where the meteorite crashed into and the giant façade of the City Hall all the way down to the humble abodes of Ness's and the Minches' homes and the completely-black sprites of several Sharks hooligans. Ness, quite fittingly, was sitting in the top-right corner, where his house was located on the map, and was currently glaring at Yoshi for failing to respond to something he had said.

"What – what is it?" Yoshi asked, jumping slightly.

"I was asking," Ness heaved out with a roll of his eyes, "what the hell were you doing in Luigi's room last night? If Lucas didn't tell us where you were, you would have really been in for it, you know that? Dumb bastard. Lucky Toony and I are quite the experienced liars and got you out of it before shit could hit the fan."

Yoshi shuddered again. Of course they would want to hear answers now. Ness had assembled them in his room, and had made each and every one of them swear a mutual bond of trust, that no one would ever suspect the other Dung Beatle for being the Glitch. "I know a Glitch when I see one," Ness had said fiercely as they all pooled their hands to the center, "and right now, I know that all of you here are my friends. My _real_ friends, I mean. Call it a guess, call it intuition, call it whatever you want. I don't care, you're all the same sons of a bitches that I knew and loved just yesterday. It's important that you all swear the same. We don't want any Yoko Onos in our precious band, like Lucario would have been if Lucas continued to insist that we make him the fifth Dung Beatle –"

"Can we not talk about that now?" Lucas had muttered, glaring at Ness.

"But he would have been, Lucas, didn't you hear how much of a piece of turd he's becoming? I told you yesterday, didn't I? I told you he would definitely be a Yoko Ono if we let him into our sacred group. Why do you think both their names end with an 'o'?"

"That's as logical as the theory calling you Sans right now."

"Who the hell is calling me Sans? Wait. Who the hell _is_ Sans?"

"We have more important things to talk about," Toon Link had stressed with a punch of his fist in between where Ness and Lucas were sitting. "We've already sworn to always believe in each other, so I'd really like to move onto the next thing in our agenda, if you two could just shut up for five minutes."

Cue to the current moment. Yoshi replied, brainlessly, "I – I thought it was my room. I wasn't thinking properly from – from all that was said. I think – I must have thought Luigi's room was mine."

No one said anything for a while, except for the iSaturn, which had transitioned to the next song after an abrupt ending of fading loops of "dyenum", and was currently emitting crackling static as though a radio incapable of picking up any signals.

"Such _lies_ ," Toon Link said finally, shaking his head in disbelief, as a steady strumming of acoustic guitars interrupted the static.

"Ditto on that," Ness frowned. "Come on, Yoshi. Toony and I had to lie through the skin of our teeth yesterday for you. The least you could do is tell us the semblance of the truth."

 _The truth. They want the truth. Give it to them, you filthy coward._

Yoshi gulped. "Okay. Okay. The – the truth is – the truth is Luigi took away one of my – one of my things, like he did with yours, Ness. He took one of my – fruits. An apple. Because… Because I was hitting him on the head… With…" The voice died in his throat with a very lame finality.

Lucas and Toon Link looked at each other. Ness looked at him.

 _Coward._

"Yoshi," he said lowly, in a deadly serious voice that not-so-discreetly implied with every syllable its waning tolerance for nonsense, "we've been best pals since 1999. That's almost twenty years, Yoshi. We've learned a lot about each other in that time. I've learned, for instance, that when something's bothering you you fall into this troubled lull while you can think about nothing except for whatever problem's shitting on you. You get this sort of faraway look in your eyes, and you start breathing funny, too, like you're getting ready to go for a run or something. Your tail wags like my dumb dog's and you rub the back of your head. Right now – do you know what you look like? Do you know what you're doing?" He did not wait for a reply. "You look like shit. You're staring at things that aren't there and you're breathing funny. You've been rubbing the back of your head and shaking your tail a lot – look, you're even doing it right now, look!" He pointed at Yoshi's tail, which, true to his word, was wagging frantically, shaking to and fro, left and right. He willed it to stop and looked back up at Ness. "Yoshi – I'm your friend. _We're_ your friends. Your problems are our problems. If there's anything bothering you you tell us and we'll work it out as a team. As a band. You can trust us, you know you can. So tell us: _What were you doing in Luigi's room_?"

It was at that moment, at the peak of a building tension that rose like a mountain in between Yoshi and the three boys, when Yoshi almost allowed himself to melt into the fierce, determined gaze of Ness's eyes, to let his words wash over his mind and let their meaning slip through the cracks. He almost released the dual rivers of tears and words, respectively from his eyes and his mouth, right there and then, within the cast-iron safety of brotherly bonds, the comfort of presence and unburdened secrets. He almost, almost, gave himself up, revealed the answer to all, unclasped his tongue from its folds and whipped it forth to wring out the rotting, poisonous truth, to free himself of the burning ropes that bound him to the skies of regrets, guilt, paranoia and dropped him to the welcoming arms of the earth below.

Almost.

He got up. "I'm going," he said simply. He pushed Ness away and walked to the door, barely giving any time for Lucas and Toon Link to move aside.

 _"Yeah, so if it's sad, well you still got to live till you die  
_ _Man, everyone's chewin' the apple you got in your eye~"_

"Yoshi!" Ness shouted commandingly after his retreating back, but the dinosaur did not respond as he thrust open the door. "Oh for – Lucas! Go after him and make sure he –"

"Don't follow me," came the denial, lifeless in its delivery as it echoed forth from Yoshi's larynx. His back turned, his head down, his shoulders quivering, he breathed out, with a voice that communicated the heat searing the back of his throat, "I just need to be alone for a little bit, o-okay guys?" A pause. "I'm sorry."

Then the door shut and he was gone.

* * *

Lucario stood with his head sticking out of his doorway. He had detected, with his Aura, the presence of Mario and Link in the former's room, and was debating whether or not he should come over and join them.

He saw him with his Aura first, before he turned his head to the other side to confirm his presence. The wind from his running body blew the fur of his face and his chest as his eyes followed the lightning progress of Yoshi. He tore through the hallway and had disappeared into the corner where the staircases were in a matter of seconds.

The speed at which he ran had made it nearly impossible to make sure by sight and sight alone, but he managed to confirm it anyway, as Lucario lifted a paw and wiped away a drop of wetness from the mask of his black fur.


	18. ONE MORE TO GO

The lights are damped in Mario's room, turning the glow of a table lamp into that of a flickering candle. The record player spins its vinyl, swooning the room with a soulful rendition of the Mushroom Kingdom theme, of trumpets and strings and a particularly charismatic sax. Musk and chestnuts; sweating foreheads, tangled hair; grunts and moans as Peach lock her long, slender arms around the back of Mario's neck. The sheets crease and fold under their combined weight, the blankets brood in a forgotten heap by the legs.

And so the bed thrusts forth, sinking laboriously under the heated rhythm of two lovers dancing passionately into the drawl of the night.

* * *

Yoshi tosses and turns, engaged in a wild, frantic dance with his blanket. The night is cold but he suffocates in the warmth of his living, breathing body. Sleep does not come and his eyes are open as long as they are closed. When they are open he gazes at nothing. He rubs the back of his head and his tail trembles between his legs. He feels squished, as though stuck in the narrow neck of an hourglass, with the weight of infinite sand raining down upon his head in a timeless punishment. The hands of the Shyguy clock tick with merciless consistency, second-long reminders of the time he unjustly spends living.

In the span of a single night he ages a thousand years.

* * *

Luigi mutters to himself as he looks through his chest. The thought had spontaneously occurred to him that the Dung Beatles might not have been quite telling the truth, that they had wanted something from him, engaging in their typical acts of pranking and lying with the levity that was to be expected from them. He checks through the contents of the chest carefully, going through the mental list of the valuables he keeps.

Everything seems to be there, nothing seems to be missing. Perhaps they really had only broken into his room for noble reasons.

Luigi sighs and gets ready to close the chest when something catches his eye.

He frowns, looks down at it. Then he reaches his hand and takes it out from the papers it is partially concealed under.

In his hand, the shard of a red-blood egg.

* * *

Lucario stands lightly on the grassy floor of his room, eyes closed, arms crossed, Aura blazing, mouth uttering soundless names. He's been doing it for the past hour now, and each subsequent breath he draws is deeper, heavier than the last. For precisely the seventeenth time he goes over names and locations. Jigglypuff, in her room. King Dedede, in his room. Kirby, in his room. King Dedede, in his… No, you already did him… Kirby, in his… Room…

He slumps forward and is asleep when he hits the floor.

* * *

 **AM I STILL BEING WATCHED?**

 **NO?**

 **GOOD.**

* * *

Kirby paces his room, back and forth, back and forth. He has tried calling Ike, Jigglypuff, and King Dedede, the Smashers who lived closest to him, but the former two had not responded and King Dedede had simply picked up to tell him to shut the hell up, he was trying to sleep.

The Smash Mansion is low on provisions. Just last evening, he had dragged reluctant Dedede and Meta Knight into the Kitchen, where he had to sweep the corners of the giant storeroom and double-check every shelf to ensure that he had exhausted every possible food item possible before cooking dinner for the fifty-odd Smashers. The next shipment will only come in on Friday, which was three days from now, and nothing will hold out unless everyone survived on a measly stick of celery and slice of pear.

That wasn't the problem though. There is a button, a red one in the shape of an _oni_ , in the Kitchen, hidden below the surface of a counter, that Kirby and Kirby only is authorized to press in emergency situations of famines. It will alert all their suppliers immediately, allow the delivery of several edible resources by the following morning, albeit at a heftier cost. It was one of the first things Mario had installed after Master Hand had gone, for he had predicted there would one day be a disaster when Yoshi, Wario, King Dedede, Pacman, and Kirby himself would end up in the Kitchen at precisely the same time and gobble everything it had to offer.

Kirby had refrained from pushing it a week ago when King Dedede had raided most of their supply a eight days ago, heeding Mario's plea that the great costs should only be incurred in times of absolute emergency. And so he had tasked the outgoing Smashers with daily grocery lists of what to buy for dinner, and each time he would be able to cook up something with the ingredients they brought back and the few remaining ones they had – an excruciatingly inefficient system, but he had enough respect for the financial wellbeing of the Smash Mansion to resist pressing the button.

But now, now, with no one allowed out of the Mansion –

He has to press the button, by tonight, so that everything would be fresh and bountiful and ready for his use by the morrow. He was going to earlier in the evening, when he was with the company of the Ice Climbers, Fox, and Falco, was going to request that they follow him into the Kitchen briefly – but he had stupidly forgotten about it, and had only remembered it as he was about to go to sleep. And so now he walks back and forth in the limited space of his room, unable to get a response from anyone willing to follow him down to the Kitchen.

Truth be told, this is what he partially prefers. To awaken others because of his carelessness will be terribly encumbering, even if it is for the survival of the entire mansion. Going alone will make the journey significantly faster, for there is a magic mirror in his room that is once again exclusively tailored for his use, a mirror that will teleport him to its sibling that lied towards the back of the Kitchen while becoming tangibly solid to all else who tried to pass through.

But to do so would be to flaunt his life openly and tempt any passing Glitch to seize it from him.

He could just wait until tomorrow morning to press the button and have the Smashers starve for a single evening.

But then his reputation as the greatest chef Nintendo had ever had would be at stake…

Another minute later, his mind is made up. He turns, resolutely, to the mirror engraved with various food in its frame. He inflates his body with a deep inhale. Then he breaks into a small burst as he propels his feet forward, charging forth with all the determination of the pink, warrior puffball that he is.

What are the odds that the Glitch will be in the Kitchen, anyway?

* * *

Ness lies on his bed, keeping his eyes trained on the ceiling. He feels a mixture of raw betrayal and concern, fuel for the fire of anger and determination burning within him. Tomorrow, he thinks lividly, as he turns to his side and throws his blanket off of his body. Tomorrow. He doesn't care if he has to resort to violence. He'll pull out all the stops, if it means he could finally help a friend so desperately in need.

Tomorrow, he gets to the bottom of it about Yoshi, once and for all.

* * *

Greninja sighs as she sinks into the waters of the giant Dive Ball, until only her head and her arms are above the surface. Her left arm dangles over the sides of the lower hemisphere, holding onto a lit Bayleef cigar that she takes occasional drags from. The water contains a combination of Oran and Aspear extracts and billows an abundance of condensed vapor that shrouds her from all and all from her.

She is breaking two of the newly instated rules, that no one be allowed to use the Bathrooms and that everyone must travel in minimum groups of three. She doesn't care. A ninja operates independently, fends for herself without the protection of imposing laws and interfering others. In times like these, she favors dangers, indulgence, solitude, despises safety, abstention, company. She had faith, moreover, in the skills she had perfected as a ninja, her ability to detect even the quietest sound, even the slightest movement. The floor of the Bathroom was wet, and her entire body was attuned to the vibration of feet on water. Unless the Glitch was one with the air and moved with the incorporeal movement of a Ghost-type, she knew, for sure, that she would detect any incoming Glitch before it could detect her.

A true ninja, after all, is never afraid.

* * *

Lucina lies on her bed, stomach-down. The thoughts of all things related to her sword, from where it could be now to who could have ever taken it, had been eating away at her brain for the past two nights now, barely granting her an modicum of sleep. The few times her mind deviated from the Parallel Falchion were sparked by the presence of external stimuli. Otherwise, her thoughts remained bound near-exclusively to her missing, prized weapon, so much so that she had spent the entire day searching every room in the unrestricted parts of the mansion with the company of the Fire Emblem men.

Her only source of solace was the knowledge that it could not be used for any nefarious means. The Falchion recognized that its true masters were the descendants of Naga, that only those who inherited her blood and her symbol could ever allow themselves the distinction of wielding the divine blade. Unless it was Marth who had stolen her sword, which she highly doubts, considering he has his own, there was simply no possibility that the same weapon used to lope off Sonic's head could be her very own Falchion.

She wonders, gloomily, where in the Smash Mansion could one ever afford such luxury of privacy to hide something so immensely valuable.

* * *

Olimar is in the Oxygen Chamber, the small cavity of space in between the door to his room and the door to the corridors. He is ensuring the oxygen-level regulator is functioning and maintaining the concentration of oxygen in his room to that of Hocotate. It is a nightly procedure that has become all the more important: before, the consequence of breathing in too much oxygen would be lack of consciousness for an hour or two. Now, the punishment had been escalated to certain death.

The value is 30 PPM, the optimal level. The air, for the night, is safe.

He is just about to open the door to his room when a deafening knock sounds behind him.

He turns, slowly.

The knocks don't stop.

A lump of saliva travels down his throat. His heart tries desperately to free itself from the confinements of his arteries and his veins. He walks forward, heading directly into the barraging blizzard of unwelcome noise, a shiver passing down his spine and causing a mass shaking to erupt and affect every part of his body. The journey of six yards from one end of the chamber to the other seems to take the entirety of the night.

He reaches the peephole and he looks through it. He has to lean his hands against the door to steady his body, and hence, his head.

He sees the lower bodies of two Smashers (he is not tall), and recognizes their owners immediately.

Olimar pulls back. His heart slows by a millisecond as a tiny particle of calm trickles through his body. What they are doing here he does not know, but the fact that there is two Smashers automatically eliminates the chance that one of them is the Glitch – if it was one of them, then surely it would have killed the other in the time they had spent as a duo.

It is only the logical conclusion, and Olimar, after two seconds of allowing himself to recover from the shock of the noise, gets ready to open the door to let them in and find out what it was they needed.

Not much oxygen should come in if he opened and closed the door fast enough.

* * *

Pit lies on his bed, arching his back and repositioning his body to put his wings in a more comfortable position. He thinks of the day, just how uneventful and constricting it had felt, when he remembers he had forgotten to say his prayers.

He had never forgotten his prayers before.

He cups his hands, closes his eyes. He says the usual – thanks, praises, concerns. He warns Lady Palutena of the current situation and advises her to return carefully. He considers asking for the guidance of her light, but refrains from doing it, not wishing to rush her back from the problems of their own universe. He tries to find a satisfying way to end the whole speech off, but struggles to find the suitable words.

It is perhaps for this reason that Pit fails to hear the thumping sound against the pane of his window, growing louder and louder until –

 _CRASH!_

* * *

Kirby wonders where exactly the plate of boiled frog legs came from as he turns to determine the identity of the other two food that rest on the counter with the red button, when he feels himself being lifted into the air by brutal hands whose fingers dig sharply into his soft body.

Slammed ruthlessly against the chopping board, Kirby barely lets out the squeak as he feels a strong firm hand grip him in place.

The butcher's knife drops like a guillotine in rapid repetition, and one becomes halves become quarters become eighths…

* * *

The Bayleef cigar drops to the floor, the lit end snubbing itself against the wet floor and extinguishing into a wisp of smoke.

The arm holding the cigar, too, drops to the floor, pouring blood from its severed stump.

The upper half of the Dive Ball now completely shut, it turns the knob of the machine, turning the temperature of the water up, up, up.

Inside the enclosed ball, innumerable bubbles surge to the surface. They gorge themselves with heat and burst with vicious violence. Bubbles, too, swell up in spherical packets of boiling blood all over Greninja's upper body. When they burst, blue turns to red and extract of Greninja pours forth from cooking flesh and melting muscle mass into the water.

A guttered half-scream, then suddenly steam _steam STEAM!_

* * *

Pit's lifeless body drops to the floor as Olimar is kicked in his chest. His entire back slams against the right wall of the chamber, and he drops to the floor, too dazed to register anything.

It pins him gently against the wall with its foot on his stomach, leaving the door to the corridor wide open as it does.

Olimar is ready to come to, ready to shake off the wooziness, but somehow he can't do it. The blur, instead, grows even more indistinct, shapes and colors refusing to solidify into cohesive structures. He tries to calm his breathing but it becomes heavier instead, staggering his chest with great, hulking chokes and gasps. He feels the back of his throat burn, and seconds later spits bile and stomach acid from his wide open mouth. His eyes bulge from his face and leak with tears. His head aches in dull, repetitive pounds, as though suddenly afflicted with a fever. He tries, ever so desperately, to move his arms and remove the pressure from his waist.

Then he feels suddenly very sleepy and stops moving.

* * *

Pit tries to keep the gaping slit of his neck closed with one hand and brandishes one blade of the Palutena Bow with the other. Every time his heart beats blood gushes in spurts from his neck and splatters all over his hand. The attack had happened before he was given any chance to react, before he could even reach for the bow by the side of the bed, and before he knew it his head was hinging on the wide split that adorns the curvature of his neck.

He lunges forward and sinks the blade into its right shoulder. It writhes and lets out a terrible scream as Pit holds on, the muscles of his left arm straining with the sheer strength of adrenaline, forcing it deeper and deeper and deeper, cutting through more and more of the cracking bone…

A kick to his stomach sends him sprawling onto the floor. He sputters on his own blood as he aims a kick for its legs. It jumps up and smashes, bottom-first, into his stomach, completely winding him and forcing blood to spew from the slash in his neck.

Now he is growing dizzy, now he is growing weak. He breathes deeply, causing the loose flaps of skin around the slit to fold slightly. He lifts his arm and tries to force it off of him. The lopsided smile on his neck gushes blood from its lips.

It laughs, stands up, pulls the blade of the bow out from its shoulder.

Then it lifts him and places him on his chest and his stomach, burying his face in the rug that is weaved out of the finest feathers of consenting angels.

Feathers fly everywhere, an avian-themed rain of confetti kept adrift by the wind blowing through the broken window, as blade works through sinews and bone that binds wing to spine.


	19. Breakfast

When Yoshi awoke it was to find that he was scratching away at the back of his left hand. He had done it subconsciously, in his dreams, and presently he was exposing the fresh new scales that lied underneath the current epidermis. They took on a virgin, translucent blue hue, the green pigments that dictated his color yet to take effect until the next time he shed his skin.

The itch grew worse, as though an eager pet starving for its master's attention now that he was awake. It traveled up the length of his arm and he rubbed the afflicted areas with groggy vigor, exposing minute dots of the translucent blue that shone like specks of pearls from underneath the aging, green seas. He was at it for the first two minutes after his eyes had opened, unable to do anything else nor think any thoughts in the heavy fog of awakening that sagged at his eyelids.

He had awoken, as usual, from the hunger. Only it wasn't very usual this time – the internal clock of his stomach acids usually forced his body up by five-thirty. The time, according to the Shyguy clock, was six-thirty. He was an hour behind schedule. The nerve receptors that alerted him to the pain of hunger seemed to have dulled significantly. Perhaps it was the effects of lack of sleep – his last memory before finally succumbing to merciful rest was the face of the clock, reading sharply and precisely five a.m.

It gave a meek growl and Yoshi grabbed his belly tightly. The pain was coming back, growing sharper by the ticks of the clock. So much for his nerves being dulled. He got up, stretching out the kinks in his backs and elbows and knees as he did. Yesterday morning, he had three bags of dried fruits to put off a trip to the Kitchen. Today, the journey would be inevitable. He took one long look at the green-and-white, polka-dotted telephone that hung from the walls. It was law, now, for no Smasher to venture through the Mansion unaccompanied by at least two others. He could call up the rest of the Dung Beatles, wake them up, have them follow him to the Kitchen, perhaps for their own early breakfast. But then he remembered the events of yesterday, and he pushed the thought behind him with a slight shake of his head. He did not want another confrontation, least of all in the wee hours of the morning.

He would have to go alone. He felt not a single bit afraid as he crossed the diameter of his bed and walked over to the door. Fear had no place in an empty heart ravaged by the triumvirate predators of guilt, regret, and paranoia. In this sense he was not a brave warrior, but a cold, unfeeling robot, dulled to all physical and emotive perceptions, a slave to the dictators that ruled the bleak world of ruined emotions.

He walked, desolate and lost, through the waning darkness of the corridors, flaking off tiny remains of his old, obsolete self from his arm.

* * *

Lucario was bolted awake by the rings of the Pokédex-shaped telephone that hung on his wall. It cried the distorted, shrill calls of a Riolu three times, before suddenly cutting off and plunging his room into silence once more.

It was a practice that had only become nothing out of the ordinary two nights ago. There would, of course, be countless times in which it was necessary for a Smasher to make a perilous journey outside the security of his room. It was dangerous to go alone, however, and it was a necessary means of survival to develop a system that ensured the golden rule of three was always upheld. The telephone, the quintessential device of communications installed in every room, would be the easiest and most effective solution to this, but the problem came in the fact that some of the Smashers simply could not speak the common language – the Duck Hunt duo, Mr. Game & Watch, the Pokémon, including Lucario, whose method of telepathy could not travel the medium of wires and waves.

The plea for accompaniment, therefore, was not relayed via words but by the rings of the telephone. Two rings meant that you were the first receiver and were to hold for the next message of four rings; three rings meant that you were the second receiver and were to stick your head out the doorway; four rings meant that you, the first receiver, could also now stick your head out the doorway. Any more and it simply meant that the Smasher on the other end wanted to talk.

Should the receiver of the calls stick his head out and see only one other, he was to retreat into his room immediately.

Wide awake and more alert than ever, Lucario bound over to the telephone and read the caller ID that flashed on the screen of the Pokédex.

LUCAS

* * *

Something was falling towards his chest when he opened the Kitchen door, and instinctively Yoshi shot out an arm to grab the object before it could continue its descent any further.

He looked down. His hand, the back of which was now almost completely a light indigo, was gripped tightly around the hilt of a sword. It was of an oddly familiar design – a long, sleek, slender blade, possessing a guard that curved around a teardrop hole, its reddish-brown grip capped by a golden crown of a pommel.

It seemed as though someone had leaned the Parallel Falchion against the door, the point of its blade resting on the floor so that it would be the hilt of the sword that would fall towards the torso of whoever had opened the door.

Hand still on hilt, he was just about to call Lucina's name, as he took his first stride into the Kitchen.

What he saw silenced him immediately.

A bowl rested on the counter, overflowing to all sides of its circular brim with stars, stars, stars, glowing a soft yellow as they poured from the multiple, pink sections of what was once a sphere, wedged tightly onto the circumference of the bowl.

Yoshi's chest seized up with a tight compression of air, as though someone had squeezed a stopper into his windpipe.

Next to the bowl, an aquamarine plate, presenting a meal of what looked like a pair of legs. Taking on a bright, boiled color of whitish-yellow, the joints bent at odd angles so that the balls of the feet joined into a sharp point, the bulky meat of the thighs arced to complete an edible heart.

His back slammed against the wall next to the door.

Next to the plate, a silver tray, at its center a severed head that once rested on the shoulders of an intrepid spaceman. It bathed in the slick red pool of its own blood, staring with rotund, heavily veined eyes that protruded like tumors from the asphyxiated blue surface of its face.

His brain throbbed with steady rhythm, a beat that birthed innocently, inconspicuously at first, then grew incrementally louder into a pounding, howling pulses –

 _Bu-dum bu-dum bu-dum_

Next to the tray, another plate, this time made of elaborate china. Beautifully scarred with thin, curling ribbons of red, forming veins that swirled and looped, coming together to proudly present a pair of fresh, raw wings, plucked of its feathers to expose the dulling peach skin, the areas which once connected the wings to back budding with dried bubbles of dark, rich, blood.

 _BU-DUM BU-DUM BU-DUM_

At the center of it all, a small card, set up against the plate with the boiled legs, reading in block letters painted playfully in shiny red ink:

 **HUNGRY? ;)**

 _BUDUMBUDUMBUDUM_

'Yoshi?'

The dinosaur's eyes turned to meet three other pairs, all of which looked beyond him to see the bountiful food that graced their arrival. Then they turned to the familiar weapon that was affixed to the coiled fingers of the sickly blue hand, an incongruous marriage between the unexpected and the dangerous.

For an awful moment there was only stunned silence on either side.

Lucario acted first. He pushed forward, grabbed the knob of the door, and slammed it shut.

From the other side of the door came gasps gradually evolving into short bursts of terrified shrieks, almost drowned out by high-pitched, panicked cries that screamed, screamed, " _Falchion! My sword! It was he – he had it all along – let me in – I must retrieve –_ "

It was all so far away – and yet, so blaringly loud, as though traveling a powerful medium capable of channeling all energies of sound in the single concentrated zone of his hearing.

His voice boomed, 'LUCAS! Run to the nearest phone – call Mario, Link – Samus. NOW! Lucina, WILL YOU STOP PUSHING ME AND ASSIST ME IN KEEPING THE DOOR SHUT?!'

" _NO!"_ Yoshi screamed as he wrapped both hands around the door knob. _"NO!"_ he screamed again as he wrenched with his entire body. It remained stubbornly shut. A blue wisp of Aura seeped through the slit of the door frame, a source of superior physical strength employed on the other side. It was a battle he knew he would lose. He let go and instead began pounding, clawing, frantically. " _It's not me it's not me it's not me –_ _I swear –_ _please it's not me please_ , _LISTEN_ –"

The only response was a series of wild, unsynchronized gasps. Lucario's voice boomed no longer in his head. The Pokémon was taking pains to ensure that his telepathy would now only reach its intended target.

He jerked weakly at the door.

It did not open.

He wheeled around then. Saliva dripped in copious amounts from his mouth, his tail a frantic propeller of deranged hysteria. His eyes threatened to snap from their optic nerves under the burden of prodigious anguish. Every atom of his being oscillated with the frenzy of panic and the shock of injustice. He swung his body in all directions, like a deluded needle of a broken compass. Somewhere, someone was laughing. Keys… A key, that's what he needed. Yeah, this was nothing new. A locked door could always be opened by a key… No, not a key. A knife. Pick it up, hold it up, plunge, pull confidently down until a deep, rich, river of red flowed freely from the lengths of both arms. You have it, now do it. Do it. Do it.

He didn't do it.

The arm with the blade refused to dig into the earth of his own flesh. Somewhere, someone was weeping. The someone tugged at every fiber of muscle, every strand of the nerves present in his arm. He could not see it, could not even feel it. But it was there, engaged in a silent, invisible struggle of his own life and death, fighting ardently, arduously, until finally his hand became limp and the knife dropped from his grip and clattered by his foot.

He had lost the battle over himself.

 _Coward_.

It was the last thought that echoed in the empty abyss of his restored mind right before a smash against the back of his head rendered the outside world, too, black and lifeless.

 _You dirty, filthy coward_.


	20. Hell

About ten leagues below the grounds of the Smash Mansion exists a one-room dungeon. As most dungeons go it is a dark, desolate place, made especially freezing now in the current season of winter. Its entrance lies behind a small alcove in the walls of the far eastern corners of the courtyard. During the springtime, it broods forgotten under moss and vine; now, it hides under piles of freezing slosh. To open it one must simply tap the right brick, located three up, two across from the trash can-shaped mark on the lower right. This will cause the wall to shudder and the bricks to crumble, revealing an elevator of the most rudimentary kind – the kind used in the industrial ages of old, with a square metal platform to support the feet and black rusty railings to prevent dangerous falls. There is only one button because there is only one floor it can go. The creaky descent takes an estimated ten minutes, during which the eyes must slowly become accustomed to the gradual purge of all natural light. The elevator grinds to a halt at the beginning of a short narrow corridor, at the end of which is a heavy metal door with a small barred window.

The dungeon's name is simple: Hell.

There are only four Smashers who know about the existence of Hell. The first three are Mario, Link, and Samus, who had inherited the knowledge from Master Hand. The last one is Yoshi, who knows about it only because he is currently imprisoned there.

Yoshi sat on the thin blanket that was his only layer of insulation between his bottom and the freezing floor. The massive quilts they had thrown over him were not enough to stop the convulsions of cold rocking his body. Neither was the Podoboo radiating its warmth through its prison of glass. Yoshi shuddered like there was no tomorrow, his arms hugging the life out of his chest and his hands buried deep into his pits. He was sorely tempted to scratch away at his back, the entirety of which was burning with the itchiness of his premature shedding. Already the decaying scales were flaking in copious amounts from his skin and sticking to the charged scraggly surface of the quilt.

And yet he was at a strange dull ease. The reality of his situation had yet to take firm hold of his mind and send the cylinders of terror into overdrive. In the groggy stupor of his trauma, Yoshi thought nothing, could remember nothing. Occasionally he would see a sudden motion in the periphery of his vision and he would snap his eyes then, his chest heaving from the fresh bursts of panic – but always it would turn out to be some strange shape cast unto the walls by the shadows of the flickering flames.

But, of course, such blissful anesthesia does not last forever, and as its effects slowly waned, the memory of what had happened immediately after his first awakening played in his mind.

* * *

 _It was cold, very cold._

 _It was dark, very dark._

 _His feet were being dragged through a cold, wet slush._

 _Snow, his mind dully registered._

 _He was being pulled through the snow by a pair of rough strong hands, one on each shoulder._

 _It was dark, very dark, even though his eyes were open._

 _He struggled to open his mouth. Stretching even the tiniest muscle felt an arduous exercise up an entire hill._

 _"_ _He's awake," said the voice on the left._

 _There was no response from the right._

 _Yoshi turned to his left. He wanted to see. He needed to see. But still it was dark, very dark._

 _His tongue flopped like a dying fish in his mouth, struggling to reach the upper chamber of his mouth to pronounce the first syllable of the word he so desperately wanted to say._

 _He knew suddenly, why his eyes were so useless. They had been rendered blind by some soft constriction looping around his head. His eyelids rubbed against them as he blinked, repeatedly._

 _"_ _Loo," he finally managed to groan as something soft and velvety brushed against his nose._

 _'_ _Shut up,' boomed an aggressive, very familiar voice in his head._

 _It sounded like thunder._

 _The smell of roses and Phosbat venom gushed into his nostrils. It flooded his brains and intoxicated him in a second. A puffy cloud fogged his mind and made him quite incapable of anything._

 _"_ _Luigi," he managed to gasp before he stumbled back into the unconscious._

* * *

"Everyone is to return to their room immediately. Anyone found outside their room after fifteen minutes of this announcement will be seized and isolated. Unrestrained force will be used if necessary. No one is to leave their room until further announcements calling for such. Do not contact anyone else in any way. Do not respond to knocks on your doors or unauthorized calls on your phones. If you detect in any way something odd or suspicious do not hesitate to leave a written note detailing such outside your door.

"I repeat…"

The words of Samus's voice booming all over the Smash Mansion rang in Toon Link's ears as loudly as it did a day ago. Back then, he had reacted with a surprise that turned quickly to wild speculation, his burning curiosity spurred further by the mounting frustration of being unable to share his beliefs and concerns over what happened with others. He found an outlet by making repeated trips round his room, dragging his feet across the carpet, and throwing longing glances at the Postbox-shaped telephone that seemed to beg for use with its constant joyful wiggling. Finally, exhausted both physically and mentally, he succumbed to his bed and lied there for hours, half out of tiredness, half out of nothing to do.

He might have found beauty in his room if he wasn't so used to it. It evoked a familiar rustic warmth, what with its plain wooden walls, the stone alcove in which he boiled a passable imitation of his grandmother's soup, the garbs of green and crayfish-patterned pajamas hanging from stone hooks near the bed. It was an architecture reminiscent of home and family. Home, family… A million miles away, a distance ever more unbridgeable with the mutant release of the Glitch…

Toon Link gulped.

There was a knock on the window.

* * *

The office of the Nintendirectors' was in the worst state of disarray since the day of Crazy Hand's departure with Master Hand, in which he launched into one of his massive shit fits of punching every single thing in sight as some kind of psychotic farewell ceremony. Papers strewn everywhere, bleeding with inked words, some of which were circled, many of which were underlined, a few of which were crossed out with decisive, impaling lines. An overturned cup spilling its minute brown contents near the leg of Mario's desk. Strands of Samus's hair sticking to random surfaces, ripped off from her scalp by the nasty developing habit of chewing thick ropes of her hair at a time. About the only thing that maintained its order was the aquarium that housed Samus's Skultera, whose murky home seemed strangely more bubbly than before, and the bed in which the still-unconscious Shulk snoozed away.

'It's quite obvious, really,' Lucario was saying as he sat on the sofa with his arms sprawled comfortably over the head of the couch. 'Yoshi is the Glitch. His physical descriptions perfectly qualify as a suitable summoner and conduit for the Glitch. Shoes? Check. A Smasher not either of the Links? Check. His strange mannerisms and behavior only further enforce the notion. Honestly, we should force him to do the test now – force him to squeeze the trigger. If he can't do it, we know it's him.' There was a brief pause. 'It _is_ him.'

There was silence, a heavy, prodigious one that seemed to weigh on everyone's shoulder, drag down their heads. Link looked up from his chair, opened his mouth to say something, and, when nothing came out, closed it again. Samus, for sake of something to do, picked up the soundtrack of _Metroid Prime_ and restored it to its rightful place on the shelf of vinyls. Mario continued to stare pensively out the window, at a complete loss for things to say.

'Well?' Lucario finally urged after a full thirty seconds of nothing.

At last Mario opened his mouth to speak. Out came a croak. He cleared his throat, and tried again. 'It's not that simple," he said finally.

'What isn't? He was there, with the last few remaining parts of Kirby, Olimar, Pit… Greninja…' At the mention of her name Lucario's eyes flashed a momentary blazing blue; the bubbles in the Skultera's aquarium issued even thicker than before. He continued, 'Ask Lucas and Lucina again. How many times do you want to question them? Yoshi had the Falchion in his hand when we saw him, for Arceus's sake. And we already proved that the use of the Falchion is no longer tied to the bloodline of the Naga, what with that Glitch running its powers rampant all over the place. All four of us could use it, no problem. Sonic's autopsy proved death by sharp object, did it not?'

At the word "autopsy", Link spoke up, suddenly and randomly. "Hey, Mario, weren't you saying that there was something strange about Greninja's… Body? What, uh. Re-remained of it, anyway?"

The topic was swinging wildly from the subject of Yoshi's proposed guilt to the dead carcasses of their former friend, and yet the latter was infinitely more inviting to three of the four cooped up in the room. Mario jumped on the change of conversation, gladly. "Yes. The legs… How do I put this simply… Does not seem to exhibit the properties of regular boiled flesh. It… It seems to be almost… _Watery_."

"Well, she was a water-type," Samus muttered as she scooped out some mashed Evir flesh and dropped the dollop into the tank. The Skultera devoured it within seconds.

Lucario would not stand for it. 'Why is it that everytime I bring up Yoshi as the Glitch, everyone becomes so damn uncomfortable and silent?' he demanded, eyes of fury passing in equal amounts over the stricken faces of Mario, Link, and Samus, all of which winced slightly at the brutal swerve back to Lucario's previous concerns. 'I get it, he was oh-so innocent and likable and it's hard to believe that he's going around murdering everyone and spraying blood all over the place. So what? You read the book! The Glitch will jump on the opportunity to inhabit any body it sees! You think the Glitch _cares_ if Yoshi comes from a game where the slightest leak of blood is as impossible as a Magikarp learning Hyper Beam?!' Lucario jumped to his hind paws and stared hard, at the paling Mario's face. 'Yoshi. Is. The. GLITCH!'

"We don't know that," Mario said sharply. His response this time was immediate.

'He was down in the Kitchen with four dead Smashers, for crying out loud! He broke the protocol of going in rules of three! He had the fucking Falchion right in his hand! What more do you want? What more do you _need_?'

"What we _want_ ," Mario seethed, as he stepped away from the window and took a deliberate step to Lucario's shaking form, "is hard evidence. What I _need_ is to see Yoshi, deliberately and enjoyably, pierce flesh and draw blood with absolutely no restraint or remorse. Then – _then_ I will believe you. Then will I agree that Yoshi is the Glitch, and shoot him with no fear of regret with the Patch Gun."

They were eye to eye now, the nose of Lucario's bared snout mere inches from the longest standing strand of Mario's bushy eyebrows. The commonplace silence that followed was punctuated only by the heavy gasps of either party.

"Let's just go with what we originally agreed on, Lucario," said Link quietly. "We're going to give it a week. If no more killings happen in that time, then we'll force Yoshi to try and pull the trigger of the Patch Guns. If he can't do it – well, then we'll know. Then we'll shoot him – it."

"Just imagine if he wasn't it, Lucario," Samus said as again took out the _Metroid Prime_ soundtrack from its place on the shelf, with half a numb mind to lose herself in some of the breathtaking pieces offered within one of the best games of all time. "He'd successfully shoot the gun, and waste a Patch. And we'd be one Patch less from defeating the wretched thing, one less death we can afford. Remember – we only have fourteen of them, and every single one is precious."

Lucario took one final heavy heave through his nostrils before throwing himself back on the couch. 'Fine,' his voice echoed in their heads. 'Fine. But if you ask me, we're just wasting everyone's time. There's no doubt in my mind it's him. Mark my words, one week is going to fly by and all we'd accomplish is having everyone under house arrest like the time Waluigi threatened to touch children in inappropriate places if he didn't get into the next installment of _Smash_.'

"We'll see about that," Link said as his eyes slid to the clock on the wall. It was nearing twelve-thirty. "Hey, Mario. Lunch time. You ready to deliver?"

* * *

"You scared the shit out of me," said Toon Link as he took considerable care in swinging his windows out so as not to knock the precariously-balancing Ness off the sill.

"Well, change your pants, then. Preferably into something warm. We're going out," said Ness as he swung himself inside.

" _What_?" Toon Link yelped. His verbal shock was followed immediately by a tight slap over his mouth, and Ness, eyes bulging angrily, hissed, " _Ssshhh_! I said we're going out! We're going to see Yoshi!"

"Yo – wha –" Toon Link could only stutter as Ness grabbed a pink sweater with the Triforce insignia boldly printed on its front from its hook and threw it over Toon Link's head. "Ness, what the hell are you talking about?" the poor confused Hylian blurted as he grabbed the sweater off his head, only to be suffocated with another faceful of fabric, this time by the roughness of long field pants. "Ness, what the _hell_ is going on?"

He quite wisely ducked his head this time, in order to avoid the hard boots sailing their way to his face. They smacked against the wall behind him with a dull _thunk!_

Ness bit his lower lip as he ripped the hood of his parka off his head. "They got Yoshi," he said, and despite every effort to remain calm and still the tremble of his arms and legs were visible half a mile away.

"What are you –"

"I saw them. Looked out the window yesterday morning. Link and Lucario were dragging him through the snow, all the way to the courtyards. Had to follow them after that."

"You went out –!" Toon Link was about to utter a second yelp, but Ness cut him off again with a snap of his own.

"They think it's him, don't you understand? Some shit went down in the mansion and they think he did it. I don't know if anyone died, or who did. I don't care. What I care about is going to see Yoshi. We, the Dung Beatles, are going to see him, right now, and extract every ounce of truth from him. And we have a very narrow window of opportunity to do that, because every fucking hour of the day that maniac dictator Pokémon uses his voodoo aura bullshit to make sure we are where we're supposed to be."

"How do you know –"

"I'm fucking psychic, you idiot. I know when some intrusive meddling power washes over my body. And it's been already been five minutes trying to haul your lazy reluctant ass off your bed, so pretty fucking please, can we get going already?"

It took Toon Link a record thirteen seconds to pile on every article of clothing that Ness had chucked his way, and in another four both boys were perched on the sill of Toon Link's widow, Toon Link with his Deku Leaf and constant mutters of "This is crazy. This is fucking crazy," and Ness with his psychic abilities of teleportation and expressions of determination etched into every muscle of his face.

"Now we go get Lucas," he said.


	21. The Worst Thing You've Ever Done

"But Ness, I _saw_ him. He was all by himself in the kitchen, and – and –"

Lucas's voice died in his throat, but he did not have to finish: the twenty-minute journey to the isolated courtyards had given him ample time to blurt out his recount of the incident two days prior. Toon Link had listened with the appropriate gestures: gasps at Lucas's descriptions of the corpses piled before him, an obligatory "What!" at the reveal of Yoshi's solitary presence. Ness, however, had reacted to the story with nothing more than silence, except for the occasional grunts when he had to expend some extra effort in lifting his foot from the snow.

Now the three boys stood before the bricked alcove through which Ness had watched his friend disappear just over twenty-four hours ago. Ness squeezed his tongue on the back of his front teeth as he studied a hastily-drawn diagram of the brick wall. He looked up, gazed at the real thing, and then switched back to the diagram. The diagram was drawn in thick black ink from a permanent marker, the end of which he used to tap the illustrated bricks. He was trying as hard as he could to remember the exact brick that had opened up the hidden entrance. He remembered that it was in the general right of the wall, but beyond that he wasn't sure. The logical thing to do would be to tap every single brick until the wall crumbled away, but Ness was cautious: he was afraid that repeated failed attempts would trigger some security measure that could deactivate the entrance, or worse, warn the Nintendirectors of his attempted trespassing.

"Ness," Toon Link was speaking up now, "are – are you sure this is a good idea? I mean – Lucas does bring up a good point, don't you think? I'm not saying Yoshi's the Glitch!" he quickly interjected, as though fearful that the mere implication of such blasphemy was enough for Ness to back throw him to the other side of the universe. "But you know, maybe…" Toon Link shrugged, a pathetic one. "Maybe it's just not the best idea?"

Ness wasn't listening. He had just noticed an odd carving on the lower right section of the wall. He thought it looked like a trash can, with a cylindrical body and a pan-shaped lid. He pointed a finger at the brick where the tip of the lid was carved into, and then shut his eyes. He tried to remember the exact placement of Link's hand relative to this indent. He knew it had to be close, could see it in his mind's eye. The only question was, where…?

A grueling twenty seconds later Ness opened his eyes. He counted two up, one left from where he started. Then he pushed.

The brick did not budge.

He moved up a brick. He pushed again.

Again, nothing.

"I mean, maybe – maybe we should come back later, discuss this through –"

"If you're afraid," Ness said loudly, without turning back, "you can just leave. I'll see him by myself."

There was no reply behind him.

"We made a vow as the Dung Beatles to never abandon each other," Ness continued as he shifted his hand to the left by one more brick. "Through thick and thin, in good times and bad times – we promised there would always be six other shoulders to rest your head on. If you can't commit to that, then go. Go, and don't show your backstabbing selves to me ever again."

And with those handsome words out of his mouth, Ness pushed. There was a low bellow, as though the wall was releasing a long slow fart. Then the bricks crumbled away and a great blackhole opened up before them.

* * *

With the exception of the wardrobe door, kept slanted on the wall by the wardrobe, and the various gashes on her wall, which she covered with a wide tapestry featuring the insignia of her mask, Lucina's room was more or less back in its ordered state. This included the Falchion, in its rightful place on the sword stand by her door. She cast frequent stares in its direction, out of relief at its return, and disgust that a holy weapon reserved for the descendants of Naga could ever serve function to a slimy, wretched thief who possessed neither required blood nor noble intent.

She still remembered, very vividly, the back of Yoshi's hand, marred a mutant turquoise for some inexplicable reason, holding tightly the grip of the Falchion, in direct violation of its divine purpose and requisite. Before him, the hint of a perverse meal laid out like a banquet – the severed head of Olimar gazing blankly to the ceiling, the broiled legs of Greninja inviting teeth to sink into flesh. There might have been more, but the crowding of bodies around the single entrance had made it difficult to see beyond, and once she caught sight of the Falchion in Yoshi's hand nothing else could stave her mind off it other than its immediate return.

Return it did, but only when four hours had passed since the early morning catastrophe and the announcement ordering complete isolation. Her overwhelming impatience and frustration at it all was finally broken by a sudden knock on her door, followed quickly by Mario's voice: "Lucina, this is Mario and Link. We're coming in to give you your sword. Don't be surprised."

"Lucina," he had asked after her vocal celebration of being reunited with her sword had passed, "Lucas tells me he had called up you and Lucario in order to get some breakfast before the incident in the kitchen. Is this true?"

An easy question. Lucina simply nodded as she sat down on her bed and held the Falchion tenderly to her eyes, checking immediately for any blemish or defect that had surfaced from its misuse.

"When was the last time you polished your sword?" Link asked next. "Roughly how many days before the theft did you do it?"

Though Lucina was busy inspecting every feature of the Falchion, from its gilded pommel to the tip of its blade, she had no trouble answering, for it was another easy question whose answer lied in a clockwork routine and thus required no break in concentration to muster.

"I polish my sword every night. Hilt to blade, meticulously until it's free from all grime. So… The night previous, I suppose."

She looked up, then, and shot each an inquisitive stare. "Why?"

The only response she got was the silent exchange of glances between the two. Then they turned around swiftly, thanked Lucina for her time, and readied their departure.

"And remember, Lucina," said Link as Mario pulled the door open and Lucina simply gazed aback at the sudden end of the interview, "no talking to anyone about this – or anything else, for the matter. Not until further notice, at least."

"But wait!" she cried, resting the Falchion by her side and jetting up from the bed, "what's going to happen to us? How long are you going to keep us in our rooms? Wha – what's going to happen to Yoshi –"

The singular reply to the two and half questions was the shut of the door in her face.

* * *

Once at the bottom, there was a bit of hesitance among all three boys as they stood in front of the stopped elevator, facing the heavy door down the corridor and knowing who the feeble light radiating within would reveal.

"Alright," said Ness, and though he spoke in a whisper his voice boomed with reverberating echoes, "you two stop when we're five, no, ten feet from that door. I'm gonna go talk to Yoshi alone."

"Why alone?" Toon Link frowned. Ness could not tell if he was genuinely appalled or if he was secretly relieved to be as far away from Yoshi as possible. Certainly his words seemed to have had some effect of courage and determination in the two boys.

"You've seen how he clammed up when it was all three of us. Maybe he'll open up if I see him by myself. I've known him longest. We're two halves of a whole. The other's best friend." Then, as a quick afterthought, "no offense."

"None taken," Lucas muttered, while Toon Link nodded in agreement. "We better hurry up, Ness. It's already been about forty minutes. Lucario's gonna be checking on us soon."

And so hurry up they did, brisk-walking down the corridor with the light of a PK Fire orb in Ness's hand to guide them. It was not that long, perhaps about fifty yards in total, but the vast emptiness suffocated their grasp of time, artificially stretched each second into ten. There was something else, too, at least for Ness, that seemed to lock his ankles in ball and chain, slow his walk down to a crawl. Ness only realized what it was when he was an arm's length away from laying his hand on the rusted surface of the bolted door. It was fear. Fear that Yoshi had become ragged ghost of his former self, a mere shadow of the grand friend he used to be. To see the once-bubbly and playful Yoshi broken beyond the pitiful state he saw him last would shatter what was once an unbreakable identity, would alter the course of their friendship forever.

Ness was not sure if he was ready for such a change, as he stood on his tip-toes and peered through the bars of the window.

He saw a large circular cavern, almost as dark and empty as the corridor he had just traversed. Its darkness was pierced by the light of the Podoboo attempting to escape its prism box, its emptiness occupied by a heart-wrenching familiar form covered in layers of blankets and quilts.

He thought the blanketed lump was still at first, and for one terrible second Ness could not breathe. Then he saw a very slow, very small rise of the lump, followed by an equally slow, equally small fall.

Ness extinguished the PK Fire in his hand and wrapped his hands around the bars. He spoke, softly at first, "Yoshi?"

No response. Ness tried again, louder this time. "Yoshi?"

The blanket stirred. The quilt rustled. Ness held his breath as the shadows on the wall danced into new shapes.

Then a familiar head revealed its presence from its fabric fortress.

"Ness?" it croaked.

* * *

The reason why Link had asked Lucina about her polishing habit wasn't because it was some kind of swordie code for "Mario is fucking retarded haHAA". Rather, while he and Lucario were off dragging Yoshi to Hell, Mario and Samus had remained in the Nintendirector's office and had analyzed Lucina's Falchion with a security R.O.B. head – the same kind used at the gates of the Smash Mansion to read their cards and handprints before allowing or denying entry.

The R.O.B. head had scanned the hilt of the Falchion with a green beam of laser from its eyes. It had cross-referenced the detected fingerprints with its internal database. In five seconds it announced its results: "Fingerprint analysis complete. Matched: Lucina. And, Yoshi."

There was a long silence between Mario and Samus after that.

"Well, I guess that all but confirms it, doesn't it?" Samus said grimly.

"Not quite," Mario said as he readied the R.O.B. head for one more fingerprint scan. "Who – who knows. Maybe the Glitch possess the ability to prevent the fingerprints of its host from imprinting onto the surfaces it grips. It would be highly convenient, after all, in order to conceal its identity…"

"And rather inconvenient for us," Samus snorted as she leafed through the shelf of vinyls for the _Metroid Prime_ soundtrack.

* * *

"You look like shit," Ness said.

It was not an unfair observation. Varying shades of ugly blue splotched all over Yoshi's skin, leaving little of the lively, healthy green, as though the perpetual lack of natural light had promoted some kind of fungal infection. His cheeks, once plump and rosy, now caved inwards, featuring pockets deep enough for Ness to press his thumbs in. The last of his flesh clung desperately to his skeleton, providing insignificant divide between skin and bones, and Ness, seeing how ghastly thin Yoshi now was, mumbled, "I – I should have brought some food –"

"They bring food," Yoshi spoke in a hoarse whisper, motioning to an empty tray by his foot. "Just not enough." Then, though he was weak and starved, his voice somehow managed to acquire some kind of urgent clarity, and Yoshi said, sharply, "Ness – what are you doing here?"

"I'm busting you out," Ness said. "By proving your innocence," he quickly added, as Yoshi opened his mouth, no doubt to express some very vocal concerns. "Listen, Yoshi – I don't have much time. Five minutes at most. So I need you to tell me everything, and don't you dare try to lie or squirm your way out of it this time. I know you know something, and if you want me to help you, I need to know too. Got it?"

They were going there, and already Yoshi could feel his heart accelerating as Ness offered him no time to invent any sort of plausible excuse. "What the hell were you doing in Luigi's room the other night?"

His response was automatic. "I – I already told you. I wasn't thinking straight, and just thought his room was…"

His voice died off, because one look at fearful look at Ness was enough to quell any feeble hope to throw Ness off from the truth.

"How fucking stupid do you think I _am_?" Ness was muttering in a deathly low whisper. He might as well be shouting. It was _worse_ than shouting. His hands crackled with psionic bursts of rage, illuminating the darkness with furious tinges of pink. "You think I don't know something's up? _I know_. And I didn't come all the way down here and risk my life just to hear absolute fuck-all." Ness stabbed the center of Yoshi's shriveled nose with his finger. "So, for the last time. _What were you doing in Luigi's room_?"

There was an extremely painful silence. Yoshi looked at Ness, and Ness glared into Yoshi's feeble soul. Their pulses throbbed, one in impatience, the other in wild fear.

Finally Yoshi opened his mouth, but not before casting his eyes down. "I'm sorry, Ness."

The disappointment was palpable enough for even Lucas and Toon Link to trip all over it. Ness closed his eyes, tightened his fists over the bars. For a single intense second he manifested enough energy in his arms to almost rip the heavy, bolted door off its hinges.

"Okay," Ness said, strangely calm as he opened his eyes again. The light from the Podoboo hurt. Looking at Yoshi's downcast head made him want to hurt. Ness stuffed his hands in his pockets. "Okay," he said again. He looked away, blew a hot whistle of repressed air. "Fine." A pause, during which neither Smashers could look the other in his eyes. "Fine, don't tell me. I'll figure it out myself."

His precious five minutes was up; he did not have to look behind to see Lucas and Toon Link silently gesturing to know. From his pockets Ness withdrew one of his most cherished belongings – his iSaturn. He had fully charged it just for this purporse, had even loaded with even more songs just yesterday. "Keep it safe. Don't go out of your mind locked up all alone in here," he said as he slotted the device through the gap between the bars. As a quick afterthought he took out the marker pen and piece of paper and dropped those into Yoshi's hands, too.

Yoshi looked at the assortment of little distractions that Ness had dropped into his hands, and muttered, "Thanks." And, as though to alleviate some of his overwhelming guilt, "just – keep a close eye on Luigi."

Ness nodded as he turned away. He already was gonna. He took a step. He took one more. He took a grudging half-step, and then he stopped. He stood there, body shaking. Then, without warning, completely out of the blue, he whipped back around and slammed himself against the door.

"You know, you might think the worst thing you've ever done is whatever you're hiding from me right now," Ness hissed, acid dripping from every syllable in his tone. "But it's not. The worst thing you've ever done is that you abandoned me when you needed me the most. And I will _never_ forgive you for that."

The words were loud enough for Toon Link and Lucas to hear. They stung, burned, caused water to leap into Yoshi's eyes. Ness breathed heavily, cheeks flushed from finally letting out all the poison and spewing it over Yoshi's forlorn face. Yoshi finally looked up, letting Ness's parting gifts to drop to the floor. In a pathetic voice, he whispered, "Ness…"

But he wouldn't hear any more of it. Ness turned back around and marched away. His loud, angry footsteps were the last things Yoshi heard, before the room reverted back to its blanketed silence, punctuated only by his own irregular breathing and throbbing heart.


End file.
